I always had Gareth Barry down as a straight guy, a decent footballer, a humble team man, the sort you want to see succeed. Silly me. If you thought that Cristiano Ronaldo's move to Real Madrid was the tawdry business of the summer, you have not been paying attention to Barry's attempts to get himself a transfer to Liverpool, whatever it takes.

Last weekend Barry interrupted a holiday in Florida to talk to a reporter from a Sunday red-top newspaper. The majority of the conversation appears to have been spent criticising Martin O'Neill, his manager at Aston Villa.

This would be the same O'Neill who arrived at Villa Park and, in one of his first decisions, stopped Barry being sold to Portsmouth on the cheap. The same O'Neill who showed such faith in Barry that the club captain has become a stalwart of the England team under Fabio Capello.

His thanks was a laughable piece saying that O'Neill was more interested in commentating on Euro 2008 for the BBC than retaining his captain. About all there was to recommend the article was that at least it made a change from the clumsy leaks about Liverpool's interest and Barry's desire to move to Anfield that have mysteriously found their way throughout the summer into a friendly newspaper.

Such shabby behaviour might make sense if Villa were adamant that Barry was not going to leave under any circumstances, but O'Neill and Randy Lerner, the Villa owner, are intelligent men. They can understand why Barry's head has been turned by the approach from a Champions League club. They know that every player has a price when the big clubs come calling.

By any reasonable estimation, that price has to be close to £18million, given that Michael Carrick and Owen Hargreaves each joined Manchester United for something similar and Barry has overtaken both rivals in the England pecking order. For a 27-year-old established international player with two years left on his contract, it is the going rate.

The interesting question now is whether Liverpool want to spend that sum or whether they even have it available. One can only guess from the increasingly desperate behaviour of Barry and his genius of an agent, Alex Black, that those are questions they are asking themselves.

Surely Black is not so daft to have have promised Liverpool that he could get his player out for considerably less than £18million. Surely he was not in such a mad rush to pull off the transfer that he erroneously assumed that Rafael Benítez, the Liverpool manager, had a huge budget and would simply pay what it takes.

The questions take on particular pertinence, given that Villa are due to report back to pre-season training on Thursday, when Barry, in theory, will return as captain. It makes you wonder whether he is so embarrassed by the idea of having to meet O'Neill face to face that he has resorted to anything, even attacking his own club in the hope that they will wash their hands of him for the £13million on the table.

He is not the first footballer to stoop to such tactics, but instead of wasting time attacking his manager, Barry could more usefully have picked up the phone to Liverpool and instructed them to increase their offer. He must be wondering if they do not value him so highly after all, which is something we should all be asking, given his recent behaviour.

Why Dwain Chambers must miss the Beijing boat

I spent a morning last week with the Great Britain rowers who will travel to the Beijing Olympic Games. A more impressive bunch of athletes, or people, you could not wish to meet. These are men and women who break the ice on frozen rivers when the rest of us are curled up in the warm. Then there are the lightweights who endure a miserably sparse diet, weighing themselves every night, while training like demons several times a day.

Knowing that they labour in the giant shadows cast by Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent, there are no book deals in the offing, no Big Brother appearances, even if they win gold in China. They are doing it for themselves in the purest sense that there is nothing else - no riches, no life of fame - to chase.

Share any time with these men and women and it clarifies the Dwain Chambers issue in a stroke. You understand why it would be an insult to ask them to share a plane with a drugs cheat, why their venture does not deserve to carry the slightest taint.

Following on from the roll call of renowned athletes calling on the British Olympic Association's ban on Chambers to be upheld, perhaps it is time for a petition, for millions of sports lovers to make it plain that the disgraced sprinter is not welcome. The trouble is, Chambers has proved himself beyond shaming.

A life less ordinary

The conventional view is that we can learn from Spain, but actually, out of the finalists at Euro 2008, it is the Germans whom England should be copying. Shown up in all their ordinariness in that defeat by Spain on Sunday, they had demonstrated a spirit and a belief in each other and their tactics that turned a mediocre team into challengers for the second tournament running. England would love to be as ordinary as them.

Tour de force

The Tour de France starts again this weekend and, against my better judgment, I will find myself glued to the coverage. It is still just about possible to despair of the sport while marvelling at the event.