O’Leary Defends Steve Stride

David O’Leary has confirmed that there is a big question mark over Milan Baros for tomorrows game v Arsenal and also defends the clubs decision to have a sell on clause in the former Liverpool strikers contract.

He said: ‘I think Steve Stride (Operations Director) has done a brilliant deal on it. England is turning the same way as the continents and these clauses are common all over Europe. You see Messi at Barcelona – he has a massive buy-out clause. Freddie Bouma had a buy-out clause for £3million at PSV. Once we hit the £3million, they were able to talk.’
‘Now first of all, we don’t want to sell him, we know what we’ve got. But if he has a good World Cup and somebody comes in saying: ‘There’s £17million, this club has got to seriously look at that and I might be able to buy a few players on that. There’s loads players who have those sort of clauses now and it’s good business. I think Steve Stride’s done an excellent job putting that in the contract. Looking down the line, that’s in the contract and it’s been signed, so the player can’t then turn around and say: ‘The club turned down £13million or £14million, because he’s the one who signed the deal in the first place.’

He also says ‘I think that’s the way football is going to go in the 21st century and nobody can criticise Villa for agreeing that sort of deal.’

It will be interesting to see how the world cup goes, looks to me that Villa are relying on the Baros sale to fund next seasons purchases, if they don’t sell him, we’ll be lucky to get £3million to strengthen. Our latest poll asks if Villa will sell Baros, seems the majority are already resigned to his exit.