Twitter has just erupted in a James Milner based explosion sparked by a claim that Martin O’Neill has told Sky Sports News that Milner wants to join City and he is ready to sell at the right price.

It took a while for an actual post to appear on the Sky Sports website, but here it is. There are no actual quotes, but Sky are quite unambiguous; they claim that MON “has told Sky Sports News that he is ready to cash in”. They don’t claim that he also told them that he wants to leave, but that’s surely a safe assumption based on the stated willingness to sell.

The rest of the news and football blogging world are perfectly willing to accept Sky’s word and have all raced to publish a post that reiterates the basic claim and appended some kind of background fluff and/or speculation that we’ve all heard before, suffixed with “more to follow”.

It’s a race to break news, even when they are doing nothing really beyond repeating the single, simple claim from Sky Sports:- MON “has told Sky Sports News that he is ready to cash in” and it now moves at the speed of Twitter.

Here are some screen grabs of a couple of the initial posts put out by the likes of BBC and ESPN:-

It’s difficult for me. I have a very clear policy at Aston Villa Central of not actively partaking in speculation and rumour mongering. On the other hand, Sky have been extremely concise in their claim and, even without quotes, the writing appears to be on the wall. It’s difficult for a site named “Aston Villa Central” to sit on my hands until this is 100% confirmed.

To be clear: I’m not suggesting that this isn’t true, but the news is absolutely everywhere without a single quoted word yet. Not one.

My opinion on Milner going to City hasn’t changed. Upwards of £20million surely is a lot of money, with or without Stephen Ireland as a makeweight, but we’ve still got to go out and spend it on a player, or players, who will be brand new to Villa. Maybe Joe Cole’s £18.72m Liverpool contract adds some perspective in terms of value. That’s what £90k a week over 4 years runs to and doesn’t take into account a signing on fee, which I read to be £6m, or other costs associated with paying an employee such as national insurance contributions (generally accounted for at 10% of salary), etc.

It’s also hugely symbolic for Villa to be selling our key player two years running. And to Man City to boot. They might regard their aspirations as somewhat higher, and colour me extremely naive if you wish, but I still regard them as a direct competitor.

Personally, I think it’s a spoiler tactic from City, they don’t really need Milner, and it’s a mistake on Milner’s part to go there, but, if Sky are not twisting the facts too much, that would appear to be the case. If Milner’s heart lies elsewhere, then we really have to let him go and squeeze every penny out of the deal.

Market Value

I’ve seen a lot of talk from the McExperts pontificating about what he is or isn’t worth and most are missing the point. You don’t sell something that is not for sale for what it’s worth. He wasn’t worth £12m when he was a Newcastle player, but he wasn’t for sale and we paid what he was worth to us. He’s not for sale now, City will have to pay whatever he is worth to them.

I’d still prefer it if he stayed though and until he’s actually gone, he’s an Aston Villa player. We had exactly the same thing with Gareth Barry two years ago: MON eventually conceded that he was willing to sell at the right price, but Liverpool didn’t meet that valuation and he stayed for another season. Granted, that wasn’t his best season in a Villa shirt, but it was a season nonetheless and £12m a year later was still an exceptionally good deal for us.

We shall see.

Updated With Quotes

It’s not a website I’m familiar with, but extratime.ie have been willing to supply exactly what MON has said. By the way, just in case you weren’t aware, the squad are in Ireland right now ahead of Saturday’s friendly against Bohemians and I saw some pictures and video this morning which suggested some kind of media day is going on. I suspect that MON’s words are taken from a press conference so when Sky Sports claim that he has “told them”, they mean in the same sense that The Sun “got the big interviews” by sitting in press conferences during the World Cup in South Africa.

That’s how it works.

Here’s everything I’ve got, including some words on McGeady which are bound to fork into their own story, I’ve highlighted what was said about Milner in bold type.

Martin O’Neill
I’ve got most of the senior players here with me and I know how infuriating it can be to be making a lot of changes, particularly in the last minutes of the game for spectators who have come to watch them. So I will make a few changes at half time. But the idea is to give the senior players a half each.

You’ve got 20 players with us at the moment, including two goalkeepers. Richard Dunne obviously will start the game but I would like the senior players to get a half each.

Aiden McGeady, I think he has got the ability to be able to play in the Premiership – without question. I had him when he was a kid at Celtic. I played him without worrying too much about his youth at the time. He played against AC Milan one night at Celtic Park in the Champions League and he was absolutely fantastic.

Obviously there is a question mark over James Milner. I had a conversation with James before the World Cup and he intimated that he would like to go at that time. I haven’t spoken to him since. I know there are conversations between his agent and our chief executive. Man City have made an offer for the player, but our valuation has not been met.

I’m sure things may well get resolved. James is due back next week along with the rest of our World Cup players. I would imagine things would get resolved one way or another in the very foreseeable future.

Aston Villa are a top quality side and we are linked with players. When Man City are interested […] obviously they are in a different stratosphere but they are building up a squad capable of challenging for the Premiership. So this year is going to be especially difficult.

As the chairman mentioned, maybe it is a case of probably having to sell to buy. That is something I’m delving into at the moment.

Analysis

A lot of headlines are flying around which are basically variations on “James Milner: I want to leave Aston Villa”. Here, MON reveals that’s where Milner stood during their brief meeting before the World Cup, so it’s not exactly new news. MON says that he hasn’t spoken to Milner since, but conversations have been ongoing between agents and clubs directors and that he expects things to be resolved soon.

Martin O’Neill is generally pretty guarded in what he does and doesn’t say to the media and I struggle to believe that he would let Milner’s desire to leave slip out if he thought that he’d be staying. While he may well not have spoken to James himself in the last several weeks, he won’t be out of the loop either.

It’s worth baring in mind that since they did last sit down, City have added Toure and Silva to their midfield line up. Maybe Milner knew that before, maybe he saw the same list Noel Gallagher saw and his “mind was blown”. On the other hand, maybe he’s now looking at what is being assembled at Eastlands and wondering whether the money is worth watching from the sidelines.

Again, we shall see.

Final Update: The OS has some even more expansive quotes from MON that disclose the timing of some of the events from behind closed doors and it’s pretty clear that none of this would be divulged if there was much chance of Milner staying. It doesn’t look good at all.

The news did indeed break out of a scheduled press conference at the team’s hotel in Ireland and in BBC’s defence, they did have a journalist present. What happens these days is that they first break the news in the fragmented format that Twitter allows and then that in turn feeds the blogs and news publications that were not present. The whole thing snowballs out of control as everyone fights for the traffic with increasingly sensational headlines.

As I suggested above, now the initial furor has died down, the McGeady quotes have started getting picked up and are spawning their own storyline.