O'Neill concedes Barry is leaving

Martin O'Neill has conceded that Aston Villa captain Gareth Barry is going to Liverpool but has rejected claims made by the player that his club made no effort to keep him.

Barry has been Liverpool's number-one target this summer but Villa have so far resisted a number of bids from the Merseysiders. The latest offer was made last night and is believed to have been around €19million.

Villa are determined to get €22.5m but O'Neill admission today that Barry is on his way to Rafael Benitez's side is likely to dash such hopes.

Barry told the News of the World - in an interview that earned him a fine and a ban from training yesterday - that Villa had not done enough to keep their club captain in the face of interest from Liverpool.

But O'Neill suggests that once Barry's mind was made up - as it was after the end-of-season England friendlies - there was little point in trying to talk him round.

"We're really disappointed that he's not going to be with us, he's made his mind up to go to Liverpool," O'Neill told the club's official site. "You can talk and you can talk and talk but the bottom line was that when he came back from the England game in Trinidad and Tobago he told me he wanted to leave.

"When somebody says they want to leave a football club there's not much else you can do about it. We'd had a meeting a few weeks before that, Randy, myself, Gareth and his agent and he said that Champions League football was what he wanted to do.

"So this idea that we have not done anything in our power to keep him, I'm afraid I totally and utterly disagree. Why on earth would we not want to keep our very top player at the football club when we're trying to improve?

"I think we have made steady improvement - we've gone from 16th to 11th to sixth in the league. This season we're going to try to push on from there. So the one thing you want to do is keep your best players."

The Villa boss added: "But Gareth has made his position clear and after that it's straightforward. We've put a valuation on him and Liverpool value him differently at the moment. That's what the stalemate is, it's nothing else.

"Gareth has pointed out he wants to go and if Liverpool come up and meet our valuation, he will go. That has been the case since the beginning of June when Gareth said he definitely wanted to go to Liverpool.

"We put a valuation on him and we have based this valuation on a number of straightforward issues - not least that he's actually a top quality player."