Well, the Gareth Barry saga is over, Manchester City snatched him up for £12 million today. Considering City’s willingness to throw money at anything that moves this is a pretty good deal for them as Barry was evaluated at £18 million.
The big surprise is that he did chose City after all his talk about playing in the Champions League, I guess at the end of the day he went for the money instead. Rafa might be disappointed but I would recommend he recycles an old Shankly quote “I only wanted him for the reserve team!” :-)
As a Liverpool supporter I believe this is good news, if we had bought Barry we would probably have had to sell Xabi Alonso. Now, from what I am seeing in the rumour mill the Xabi story is starting to fade away.
So we keep our fingers crossed and keep waiting, still a lot of twists and turns left in this transfer season.
It’s no surprise that Barry opted to go to Man City. You will soon find that the top players will NOT commit to a club which has such an unclear financial future. Until that’s sorted out, Rafa will find it difficult to get the players he wants.