As promised, The Birmingham Mail has just published a letter from Gareth Barry to us, the Aston Villa fans, explaining his decision to sign for Manchester City. If you still care then you can read it here. If anyone can find where he mentions playing Champions League football then you win a fiver!!

Personally, I’m glad he didn’t leave us last year, but that’s more to do with the signals that would have sent out about Aston Villa than the season he’s given us since. As I said yesterday, I’m equally happy for him to be moving on now. He’s a quality player and he will probably do a fine job at Man City – a change of scenery will probably refresh his game and those that haven’t rated him at Villa might actually see what they’re missing when he’s not in a Claret & Blue shirt anymore.

However, as I also said yesterday, last year’s shenanigans have soiled any chance of fond memories following his departure. He makes the point in his letter that he’s not been advised by an agent this time, so it wasn’t his fault, bless him. Whatever, dude grow a set would you?!?

So anyway, you should probably go read his letter, if you haven’t already done so, to put this to bed and we can all move on. I’m not going to call him a “Judas” as it was always likely that he would leave when we didn’t finish top four. Where he chose to go to probably makes him a hypocrite, but it’s not worth getting upset about them, the world’s full of them.

On the subject of GB’s hypocrisy you might enjoy the top six hypocritical Gareth Barry quotes.  I was always expecting the following to mean that he would be staying if we finished top four and would be off if we didn’t…

If I’m playing Champions League football, there’s no need to look elsewhere. That would have to be a definite. I don’t want to be eating my own words.

Well, we didn’t and he’s off. Obviously the Champions League goes out the window, but he’s off all the same.