Martin O’Neill has told Randy Lerner that Aston Villa must be aggressive enough in the transfer market this summer for the club to be competing for Champions League qualification and if they want to retain not only Gareth Barry, but also Ashley Young and Gabriel Agbonlahor.

The Villa manager is considering going on a spending spree during the close season to strengthen a team who play Everton tomorrow in the race for Uefa Cup qualification. While detailed plans will be shelved until next month as the club aim for their highest league position in 11 years, Lerner, the Villa chairman, has been left in no doubt that paying the going rate to keep Barry and company at Villa Park is a prerequisite for progress.

The England midfield player, who earns about £47,000 a week, is attracting interest from Liverpool and is heading for a significant pay rise. “We’re going to try to be a force,” the manager said. “Randy shares exactly the same view as myself — the ambition to keep Gareth Barry at this club. We want to build a side here, but it shouldn’t surprise me that our players are being mentioned with the big four. If it’s not Gareth this week, it will be Ashley Young next week — then it will be Gabby [Agbonlahor], or John Carew if he keeps playing.

“I’d prefer to leave these things until the summer, so that we have full concentration on the games now. Randy is well versed in these matters, having been very close to players’ dealings with the Cleveland Browns [his American football franchise].”

O’Neill, who is set to name an unchanged side at Goodison Park tomorrow after his team scorched into sixth place in the Barclays Premier League on the back of scoring 15 goals in three successive victories, joked that the club’s American owner had “opened up a war chest full of £80 million worth of dollars” when they met this week. In reality there is no limit to Villa’s ambition. It is more a matter of putting in the building blocks to fulfil lofty aspirations and enticing sufficient high-quality players for the club to compete with the elite.

But retaining his England players is the priority. Not only are Barry, Young and Agbonlahor very good players, but offering them the equivalent of what they would be paid at Anfield, for instance, would offset any danger of top new signings coming in as higher earners and disrupting team spirit. “Will I spend more money than ever before? I will give everything proper consideration in the summer,” O’Neill, who has been linked this week with Thierry Henry, the Barcelona and former Arsenal striker, said. “Naturally I have to address the size of the squad. But I want to start from a position of strength, where the players who have done fantastically well here — and Gareth Barry is certainly among those — get better deals on extended contracts.

“Everton are the only club to have broken into the top four in the last six or seven years and they have earned the right to spend £12 million on Yakubu [Ayegbini]. They may have a different style of football, but their method in building is really good.”

Villa’s mini-renaissance followed a brief spell during which opponents doubled up on Young, but since O’Neill reverted to a three-man midfield and released the England winger into a “No 10” role, Villa have scaled new heights. The manager will not alter his plans just because Everton are a higher level of opponent.

“We won’t aim to be cagey for half an hour,” he said. “If we are, it’s because we’re under pressure. Our best form of defending is actually attacking, so there’s little point in trying to change that now. The last thing we want to do is to go up there and get beaten without having gone for it.”