With multiple players brought in since the season drew to a close, there is already a fresh look around Aston Villa as a club – whether this freshness means a change in fortune, however, remains to be seen.

After all, as I wrote last time, change in itself has no positive or negative connotation. I’m sure most Villa fans felt the removal of Alex McLeish was a positive change, just as much as they thought his appointment was a negative one.

With that in mind, it is hard to know how things will progress. I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again – there is value to experience, and generally an argument for paying more money to get a player who has more of it.

However, when I’ve seen the “opportunity” to resign Gareth Barry, I’ll have to clarify what I mean by signing experience and, sadly, it isn’t the likes of our former midfielder.

Why? Well, firstly, when you leave Manchester City from a position of being in the first team, chances are you have been earning a pretty penny, far more than a club like Villa should (or would) be paying.

Off hand, I have no idea what Barry is on at the club, but if my recollections were correct, it was around £80k or so when he joined – even if he hasn’t had a rise since them, £80k is not Villa territory for the most part.

Even if that kind of wage was a feasible option – presumably for the star player who holds the team together – is it really best spent on Gareth Barry? Don’t get me wrong, he was a great servant to the club and would, if he joined, offer additional experience. My question on his acquisition lies more in the value proposition his signing would make, and how he would be far from “one for the future” – a basic tenet of the Paul Lambert era.

Some have suggested Milner as a more suitable candidate though, like Barry, he is far from anything remotely cheap. He would, in order to fit even the top end of any expected-to-stay player’s wages, need to be taking a pay cut. Yes, he offers more work rate than players of Stephen Ireland’s ilk, but he is hardly great value when compared with experienced players, never mind the single-digit-thousands-a-week that the likes of Yacouba Sylla or Ashley Westwood are on.

This might sound contradictory, that I am calling for an increase in the experience around the team, only to decry the purchase of a Milner or a Barry, but there is logic to it – I promise – and a solution likely found in mainland Europe more than it is in England.

Think about if the £50k we have offered Benteke is a figure that the club will pay for a player they think is key the team. If £50k is what they want to pay, are you telling me we can’t pay that out for a player who might have experience at the level of the Bundesliga, La Liga, the Dutch Eredivisie, or even Ligue Un?

£50k a week goes a long way in those leagues. When you consider that Christian Benteke – himself part of an apparent tug-of-war between ourselves and interested clubs – was on half that when he signed, there is flex to sign players with more experience when you pay £50k.

The club know this. Randy Lerner, sometimes seen as little more than a fool, knows that there is value to be had in the league. Nobody is saying you can run a Premier League club on the same money you spend on a Sunday League team, but I think we’re all agreed that the Martin O’Neill era left a dark spectre of overspending that needs to be learned from.

Some will say it is feast or famine, though the reality is more about value, context, and knowing that you can pay £50k a week for a great player who will transform a Villa team from the off in Europe, knowing that £50k a week wouldn’t get you anywhere near the top end if the player happened to be English.

The question now is what do we do? Go and spend big money on the wages of Barry or Milner again? Or realise that there is better value out there and, like an ex-girlfriend, know that going back is rarely as good an idea as it might sound like in the throes of desperation for that-thing-I-thought-I-needed.

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