Once in every pre-season you can spot a potential transfer that is set to furrow the brows of football's sensitive plumage. Normally it involves Ashley Cole, or Nicolas Anelka, but few would have pitched a flag next to Garry Barry's bunker, as one of the Premier League's good guys seems set to hack his way out of the rough and escape Birmingham.

What makes things even more peculiar are the other characters on show. Martin O'Neill, as charming, witty, respectful and honest a manager as the modern game has seen, and Randy Lerner, the club's owner, who has bulked all of the preconceptions of being rich and powerful - not to mention American - and is doing a fair and fine job.

Villa are in many ways the perfect club, but not for Barry, it would seem. And if you look deep beneath the media murder scene, there is another peculiar irony sat near the bottom, waving at us like Steven Gerrard meeting Barry's ferry at Liverpool dock.

When Villa first signed Barry from Brighton way back in 1997 there was a huge amount of controversy over the transfer with a tribunal having to decide the fee. Further down the line, and with GB established in the first-team, Villa actually refused to play Barry for a period so that the player didn't pass a set number of appearances and thus trigger another appearance-related payment to the Seagulls.

Wind forward some ten years and it seems the tables have been turned in every respect, except that the club at least look likely to receive something close to a transfer fee they deem acceptable.

All in needs now is for Brighton to weigh in with £20million bid and this saga will really be motoring.

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