Martin O'Neill prepares for Gareth Barry talks

May 12 2008 By Bill Howell

GARETH Barry was today hailed as a "demi-god" at Villa by Martin O'Neill - just 24 hours before a crunch meeting between the Villa boss and Randy Lerner to discuss his future.

O'Neill ridiculed Inter Milan's so-called interest in Steven Gerrard and says Villa should not pin-point a media-hyped campaign to hang onto Barry - the likes of which have not been seen since John Gregory attempted to fire bullets at Dwight Yorke over his departure to Manchester United.

The current Villa boss said: "We're going to be sitting down very shortly and discussing Gareth's future. We won't let this lie.

"I'm going to see the chairman in the next couple of days with a bit of luck and the two of us together might be able to persuade him to stay.

"I say persuade him, but he still has two years left on his contract.

"It's quite ironic that Liverpool have gone to great lengths to say that this supposed offer has arrived from an Italian team for Steve Gerrard and he has several years left on his contract.

"Maybe we should take a leaf out of their book and do exactly the same?

"Gareth is a demi-god at Villa Park, he has that reputation and he's playing for England and he hasn't had to move to another club to do that.

"He's been particularly brilliant for us. We want to improve the team and our best chance of doing that is to keep our best players and adding some quality."

O'Neill is no longer confident of hanging onto Barry.

He added: "I wouldn't want to be saying how confident we are of all these things. It's a different era we live in. We will see.

"All I know is he has never expressed one iota of unhappiness in my time at Villa Park.

"He might not have stayed that long had he been realy unhappy before."

O'Neill saw Barry turn in yet another masterful performance in the 2-2 draw at West Ham.

Barry scored to give Villa brief hope of automatic UEFA Cup qualiification against 'Boro before Rangers swallowed that dream.

The Villa boss said: "Gareth might have been affected by the speculation last week, but I thought he was back to his best yesterday - he did splendidly for us.

"You wouldn't have thought he had anything else other than a win on his mind."