Tag: Emmanuel Petit

Villa (eventually) paid up for Barry’s football education

THE MAN whose all-time appearance record was overtaken by James Milner in February 2026 spent six years from the age of nine training once a week at Albion’s school of excellence in Seaford.

Hastings-born Gareth Barry made one substitute appearance for the youth team but, with off-field issues clouding Albion’s horizon at the time, decided to continue his football education at Premier League Aston Villa.

“It wasn’t nice being at Brighton then,” Barry told Spencer Vignes in a matchday programme interview. “There was talk about the club folding and, if that had happened, I could have been left in the middle of nowhere.

Gareth Barry was a young Seagull in the 1995-96 season

“They were in Division Three and looking like they were going out of the league, so there were a lot of things favouring a move away.”

His move to the Birmingham suburb of Sutton Coldfield was the springboard to a stellar career that saw him go on to make an all-time record 653 Premier League appearances for Villa, Manchester City, Everton and West Brom as well as earn 53 caps for England.

He spent 12 years at Villa, became the club captain, was their Player of the Season in 2006-07 and made 440 league and cup appearances.

He made his Premier League debut at 17 on 2 May 1998, going on as a 49th minute substitute for Ian Taylor in a 3-1 win away to Sheffield Wednesday (Lee Hendrie was one of Villa’s scorers and future England manager Gareth Southgate was in defence).

His first start came in the last game of that season against champions Arsenal: it was eventful.  He started in midfield up against Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit and ended at centre-half covering for Ugo Ehiogu who’d been sent off. Before long he was a regular first team pick.

Barry on his full Villa debut against Arsenal

Noting the progress of their former player, the then hard-up Seagulls (as they were back in the 1990s) sought compensation for their early nurturing of Barry and his friend Michael Standing, who’d also switched from Albion to Villa at the same time.

Villa disputed the claim and, at a Football League Appeals Tribunal in London, Villa’s manager, the ex-Albion player John Gregory, declared Brighton chairman Dick Knight wouldn’t recognise Barry if he stood on Brighton Pier with a ball under his arm and a seagull on his head.

If he thought that was funny, the smile was soon wiped from his face when the powers-that-be sided with little old Brighton and ordered the Villains to cough up.

During the hearing, Les Rogers, the Albion youth coach spoke with knowledge and passion about the work he had done with Barry and Standing from under 10s to under 16s.

Les Rogers

Although he had only played one youth team game as a sub, Barry had featured in various age group teams as a left-sided defender, left-back and in midfield (Standing had actually been the better prospect in the younger age groups but he never made it to the Villa first team).

“We made the case that Albion had seen Gareth as a player of real potential from the early days and had given him and Michael top-quality coaching,” Knight recalled in his autobiography, Mad Man: From The Gutter To The Stars. “Whatever this boy had become – he was already being talked about as a future England international – was 95 per cent down to the football education he’d received from Brighton.”

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The tribunal worked out a club and international appearances payment instalments package Villa should pay to Albion that, over time, would have totalled £1,025,000, plus a sell-on percentage. (There was a technical hitch over the compensation for Standing. It was eventually set at £200,000).

In spite of the ruling over Barry, aggrieved Villa started to stall on the payments due and, because Knight was desperate for cash to keep ailing Albion alive, he eventually did a once-and-for-all deal with Villa chairman ‘Deadly’ Doug Ellis.

It meant the total Villa paid Albion for Barry was £850,000. As Knight would later rue, it meant when Barry was sold to Manchester City for £12.5million, Brighton missed out on £1.8million they would have received if the original tribunal settlement had remained valid.

Born on 23 February 1981, Barry’s footballing prowess first showed at William Parker Grammar School and as well as training with Brighton’s East Sussex school of excellence at Seaford, he earned recognition at school, district and county levels.

“My upbringing wasn’t overly comfortable,” Barry told reporter Joe Bernstein in a 2016 interview for the Daily Mail. “I’ve got three brothers and two sisters. Dad was a plumber who worked really hard to support six children, and mum was busy at home. The four brothers shared a room, a bunk bed on each side. It wasn’t luxurious.”

It was only in his final year at William Parker that national scouts took notice and he had a number of suitors prepared to take him on. He shunned offers from Brighton, Arsenal, Chelsea and Crystal Palace, and took his mum and dad’s advice to move 200 miles from home.

“My mum and dad were keen for me to skip London and go to the Midlands. They felt a proper move would serve me better than coming home every weekend. So, I did my GCSEs and left,” he recalled.

“I lived in digs, the minibus would arrive at seven in the morning and I wouldn’t get back until five in the afternoon. I missed my family but drilled it into my mind that I was there for the football. It was a very good decision from my parents.”

Managers came and went at Villa – Graham Taylor and David O’Leary before Martin O’Neill – and Barry remained a stalwart of the side, appointed captain under O’Neill in August 2006.

Bigger clubs started sniffing around him and in 2008 it looked like he would move to Liverpool with Steve Finnan as a makeweight, but Liverpool weren’t prepared to meet Villa’s asking price.

Barry took an unwise move to go public with his desire to leave and ended up having the captaincy withdrawn, being fined and ordered to train on his own, before patching things up.

O’Neill told the Birmingham Mail: “We obviously don’t want him to go, so the price we are asking is a fair and realistic one for a player who is so good. In fact, I think it is really cheap.

“My own view is that he should hang around for another year and see if we can make further progress as he would want.

“Gareth is still only 28 next year – if we don’t get where he wants to go, everybody would wish him well.” The following year fees were agreed with Manchester City and Liverpool.

Barry chose City because he was annoyed that Liverpool hadn’t found the cash the year before and he also didn’t pick up the right mood music from Reds’ boss Rafa Benitez about where he would fit into their set-up.

“I met the City manager Mark Hughes in a hotel. He emphasised the ambition of the owners. He described it as a speeding train and his advice was to jump on,” said Barry. “’It appealed to me that City hadn’t won a trophy for so long and I’d be part of the team to end it.”

It was the right choice because he went on to win the FA Cup in 2011 and the Premier League in 2012.

Barry’s development into a full England international began with selection at under-16 level, he went on to captain the under-18s and earned 27 caps for the under-21s between 1998 and 2003, equalling Jamie Carragher’s record, until it was beaten by James Milner.

When still only 19, Barry made two substitute appearances for Kevin Keegan’s senior team, picking up his first full cap against Ukraine in a Wembley friendly on 31 May 2000, shortly after he’d played in Villa’s 1-0 FA Cup Final defeat to Chelsea.

His first start for England was four months later in a 1–1 draw against France and he was a halftime sub against Germany in the 1-0 defeat that was Keegan’s last in charge and the last game played at the old Wembley.

Caretaker manager Howard Wilkinson selected him at left-back for a World Cup qualifier in Helsinki with Martin Keown captain for the one and only time. Antti Niemi and Sami Hyypia were playing for Finland. The game finished 0-0 but was full of controversy in that some felt Niemi should have been sent off for wiping out Teddy Sheringham outside his area in only the fifth minute and a late ‘goal’ by Ray Parlour was deemed not to have crossed the line.

During Sven Goran Eriksson’s time in charge Barry lost his England place to Ashley Cole and Wayne Bridge although he did make late sub appearances in May 2003 against South Africa and Serbia and Montenegro.

It was then another four years before he was recalled and became a regular, firstly under Steve McClaren and then Fabio Capello. Barry captained England against Ghana in a 1-1 draw in March 2011 and won his 50th cap for England against Spain later that year.

He scored in games against Trinidad and Kazakhstan and his headed goal (some said it was a Daniel Majstorović own goal) against Sweden in November 2011 was a landmark one – the 2,000th for England since their first international in 1872.

Bobby Zamora was up front for England that day, replaced in the 70th minute by Darren Bent, and Milner went on for Jack Rodwell. David Stockdale was an unused sub.

Barry’s last cap came when Roy Hodgson sent him on as a half-time sub for Steven Gerrard in a 1-0 win away to Norway in May 2012 and was then subbed off injured in the 73rd minute.

Barry initially left City for Everton on a season-long loan for the 2013-14 campaign during which he joined an elite club in going past 500 Premier League appearances and helped the Toffees seal a return to European competition for the first time since 2010 when they finished fifth.

He moved to Goodison Park on a permanent three-year deal in 2014 and played in all but one of their 10 UEFA Europa League games in 2014-15. The following season, when he turned 35, Barry claimed an awards double by being named both Everton’s Player and Players’ Player of the Season.

He told evertonfc.com: “It’s fantastic. It was great for me to be nominated and win these awards. If you look at the talent in our dressing room, for me to be chosen as the Player of the Season, it means a lot to me.

“Both awards mean so much and when you are getting voted by the players you are training with each day and then playing with, any professional will tell you that it means a lot.”

After a total of 154 appearances for Everton, he joined West Brom in August 2017 to fill the void left by the departure of Darren Fletcher.

Albion head coach Tony Pulis said: “He’s a fantastic player and I think his attitude towards playing is really gauged by the fact that Everton had offered him a two-year contract to stay there. He really wants to play and I’m really looking forward to working with him.”

Barry had one season in the Premier League with Albion, and another in the Championship after their relegation in 2018. Injury brought his 2018-19 season to an early end and he was initially released before re-signing in November 2019 until the end of the season.

Although 38 by then, he said: “I came to West Brom as a Premier League club and I want to help take it back there. I believe it is where this club really deserves to be.”

Baggies boss Slaven Bilic told BBC WM: “It will be brilliant to have him with us.

“You need that kind of quality in the middle of the park, and you need that kind of character around you in good times and hard times because he has been through it all.”

He finally called time on his career in August 2020, however, Barry didn’t stop pulling on his boots and turned out for Kidderminster-based Comberton Dynamoes Vets (who also included another ex-Villa player in Darren Byfield in their ranks).

He was once again in the headlines in July 2024 when, aged 43, he signed for 12th-tier Hurstpierpoint, in the second tier of the Mid Sussex Football League, to play alongside his lifelong friend and agent Michael Standing.

• As Milner closed in on Barry’s all-time Premier League appearances record, Barry told OLBG.com editor-in-chief Steve Madgwick: “Having played with James at Villa, Man City and England, and he’s a good friend, I know how hard he’s worked and he’s left no stone unturned.

“He is the ultimate professional, so if James is to pass it, it’s going to someone that fully deserves it because he’s getting every ounce out of the career that he deserves because he’s putting the maximum effort in. Now with that, he’s got quality as well. That’s not to be underrated.”

Why Roman’s roubles spelled bad news for Alexis Nicolas

A PROMISING young midfielder edging towards first team football at Chelsea had his dreams extinguished when Roman Abramovich arrived with lorry loads of cash.

Manager Claudio Ranieri had let Alexis Nicolas know that he was heading in the right direction after he’d broken through to the fringes of the first team.

But when Abramovich took over at Stamford Bridge, big name signings started to arrive and Nicolas was left way down the pecking order behind the likes of Juan Sebastián Verón, Claude Makélélé, Geremi and Scott Parker.

New boss Jose Mourinho informed the youngster he should look elsewhere to make progress, and Brighton, newly promoted to the Championship, offered a refuge for the talented London-born Cypriot under-21 international.

Albion’s midfield options were depleted at the beginning of the 2004-05 season with Simon Rodger a long-term absentee, stalwart Richard Carpenter recovering from close-season knee surgery, and Charlie Oatway also sidelined through injury.

It meant Nicolas had a chance to show what he was made of and he played 15 games on loan from the start of the season through to October.

Enthusiastic Albion boss Mark McGhee said: “He has brought energy and he has got quality. He is a certain type of player, similar in many ways to Charlie Oatway.

“He is not a box-to-box goalscoring midfielder but what he does brilliantly is that he is always in the area around the ball where you need him.

“He breaks things up quickly and, when we win possession, we go more quickly from defence into attack with Alexis in there than we did previously.”

Nicolas clearly relished the opportunity he’d been given and, as the prospects of a permanent move grew stronger, he told the Argus: “It’s flattering that Brighton want to keep me. I like it here. I am happy with the club and the manager and I don’t see why it can’t be permanent.

“If everything can come together, and I think it will be a good move, then I don’t see why it won’t go ahead.”

He added: “There is a lot of stuff to be sorted out with a lot of different people.

“All I can say is I am happy here and I like the club. They are good people and the fans are great. Anyone with an offer to come here has got to be chuffed with that, because it is a great set-up.”

McGhee made no secret of his admiration for the 21-year-old, saying: “He’s been a fixture in the team and that says it all. He is improving week in and week out and I think he has got a good future.

“He has a terrific little engine and attitude. He quietly goes about his job and he has been really important for us so far this season.

“The boy himself is modest and unassuming. He loves Chelsea, he loved being there and I am sure he will be very disappointed to leave, but he wants to be a footballer more than he wants to be a Chelsea player. That is the important thing for us.”

McGhee explained the difference Nicolas made to the side. “He has that knack of being in the right place at the right time; he seems to cover such a big area. For a physically small lad, he is everywhere.

“He anticipates where the next ball is going and gets there early, puts people under pressure, wins the ball back and activates us going forward. He wins it and, before you know it, we’re going forward.”

When he signed permanently, Nicolas said: “It feels great. You are always sad to leave a club and I have been at Chelsea for a while, but I am excited and glad that I have signed for Brighton.

“The role I play is similar to Claude Makélélé’s and I used to speak to Claude regularly. He used to give me a lot of good advice. I’ve learned from all of the players at Chelsea, but now it’s time for me to open another chapter in my life and learn some other stuff.”

Nicolas said breaking into the Chelsea first team had whetted his appetite to return to that level and he told the Albion matchday programme: “Having played in the Premiership, I would like to achieve it here at Brighton and I don’t see why one day Brighton can’t be a club in the Premiership.”

Unfortunately, he joined an injury and suspension hit squad that couldn’t compete with better-resourced clubs in the second tier because of crowd-restricted home gates at the Withdean Stadium.

While Nicolas impressed in his first season, playing in a further 19 games, McGhee was forced to sell star players Danny Cullip and Darren Currie to bolster the club’s perilous finances, and the side only just managed to avoid the drop.

The following season, with Dean Hammond and Carpenter the mainstays in central midfield, Nicolas too often watched on from the bench and missed several weeks because of ankle and knee injuries.

Asked about his watching brief from the sidelines, he said in a matchday programme article: “It’s been very frustrating for me this season and I’m upset about it. I’d like to think that a lot of the fans would like to see me out there. The manager can only pick eleven players and he’s the boss – what he says goes and I respect that.”

His frustration was barely disguised in an interview with the Argus on 23 Feb 2006, after a reserve match he was due to play in was called off.

“It seems impossible for me to get 90 minutes at the moment,” he said. “I was out for six weeks injured and have only managed 60 minutes football against Millwall in a reserve match since because of postponements.

“Before that I was mostly on the bench. I have hardly played this season.

“Even though I am not fully match fit, I have been training hard and have enough about me to be able to cope. I am not thinking of myself when I say this. I have put personal goals to one side.

“After all, I pulled out of international squads with Cyprus earlier in the season even if it meant I could just be on the bench for Brighton. I feel I have a lot to offer.”

The midfielder added: “What matters is Albion. I love the club, the lads and the fans and want to do my best for them.”

Unfortunately, after playing only 12 matches in 2005-06, he wasn’t kept on after the Seagulls were relegated on 30 April 2006, and he never played league football again.

Born in Westminster on 13 February 1983, Nicolas went to Trent CE Primary School in Cockfosters, where he first showed a talent with a football. He also enjoyed long distance running and tennis.

He played football for a decent Sunday League side in Colliers Wood alongside two other future professionals, Steve Sidwell and Leon Britton, and eventually became part of Arsenal’s youth set-up. But he ended up as an apprentice at Aston Villa, and got taken on as a professional. He was in the same under-19s squad as future Albion goalkeeper Wayne Henderson and defender Liam Ridgewell.

But in December 2001, he joined Chelsea on a free transfer, and with 24 starts plus one as a sub, he missed only one of the reserves side’s 26 matches in the 2002-03 season.

He was handed the no.27 shirt for the 2003-04 season and made his Chelsea first team debut in their 1-0 FA Cup win away to Scarborough on 24 January 2004.

John Terry scored the only goal of the game and Nicolas played in midfield alongside Frank Lampard and Emmanuel Pettit in a side also featuring Joe Cole and Wayne Bridge.

Guardian football reporter, Paul Wilson, noted: “Alexis Nicolas made an encouraging debut, but time and again Cole, in particular, would attempt something complicated when a simpler option was available.”

Nicolas made his Premiership debut a week later in a 1–0 win over Charlton Athletic. His only other appearance was as a 90th minute substitute for Lampard as the Blues rounded off the season with a 1-0 home win over Leeds United.

Nicolas spoke about those early years at Chelsea in an interview with Simon Yaffe of planetfootball.com.

“Ranieri called me into his office at the end of 2002-2003 and told me the club didn’t have a lot of money to invest and that he didn’t have too many midfielders at his disposal, so I would be in his plans for the following season,” Nicolas said.

Even as the oligarch’s takeover was going through in the summer of 2003, the youngster was part of Ranieri’s team which beat Newcastle United 5-4 on penalties in the final of the FA Premier League Asia Cup in front of a crowd of 41,500 in Kuala Lumpur’s national Bukit Jalil stadium. It was the first piece of silverware of the Abramovich era.

“It maybe wasn’t the most glamorous of trophies, but it was still the first of many under the new owner,” Nicolas said.

It wasn’t long before a flurry of big-name signings soon changed the picture for Nicolas; the arrival of five midfielders in particular being somewhat ominous.

“I had planned to go out on loan because I had fallen so far down the pecking order,” Nicolas added. “But some of the midfielders, like Makélélé and Petit, were picking up injuries, so I stuck around.

“Looking back, it was easy to think, ‘He’s signed, so that is why I am not playing,’ but it was really a turning point in Chelsea’s history, and it was nice to have been part of it.

“I was pleased for the club when Abramovich took over but also a little bit disappointed for myself.”

After relegated Brighton released him, Nicolas tried to continue his league career and had a trial with Bradford City, but after an unremarkable game for their reserves side, manager Colin Todd told the Bradford Telegraph & Argus: “At the moment I can’t guarantee him anything. His fitness levels aren’t the best but if he wants to continue to train with us and try to improve on that then it’s up to him.”

In fact, he decided to join St Albans City on 26 September 2006 and made his Nationwide Conference debut in a 2-1 defeat at Weymouth four days later.

On 12 November, the St Albans City website noted: “A knee injury restricted Alexis to just six appearances for St Albans City but, with a number of League One and League Two sides showing an interest, the player has decided to move on.”

Nicolas said he was grateful to manager Colin Lippiatt for giving him the opportunity and added: “I was not in the best of states when I joined the club but everyone has been a great help and when fully fit I hope to join one of the League One or League Two sides who are showing an interest in me.”

But it was a career in property investment that opened up for him instead and in 2012 he set up his own business in partnership with Ryan Springer.

He wasn’t completely done with football, though, and, also in 2012, Nicolas had a spell as player-manager of Hadley FC, a Spartan South Midlands League Premier Division side, and in 2014-15 he was part of the club’s management team under former Spurs and Chelsea player Micky Hazard.

Pictures as featured in the Albion matchday programme and from various online sources.