Gareth Barry Signs with Manchester City for Less Than the Cost of a Cup of Coffee and Craig Bellamy

As the headline says: Manchester City have just signed Gareth Barry from Aston Villa for a fee of £12 million. For the curious, that’s less than the ~£15 million bid Liverpool tabled for him last season, and also less than the £14 million Man City reportedly spent on Craig Bellamy. Barry was in the last throes of a contract he refused to renew, of course, so it all just goes to show that no chorus of doting nine-year-olds can drown out a man’s desire to play for a club that has finished at least three spots below his current club in each of the last three seasons. I don’t care how noble his chin is. Richard at AMSL has the word on Barry’s logic.