"Gauntlet"- a protective glove worn with medieval armor

I read the headlines on Wednesday morning, as most of you probably did.

"Barry runs gauntlet of hate!" they barked, referring to Gareth Barry's appearance at Walsall in the friendly at The Banks' Stadium.

That's not how I saw it.

I'm not having a pop at the reporters there that night. They'd got a job to do and after a quarter of an hour their lap-tops had spirited off a few hundred well chosen words well before their deadlines.

And a headline of: "Barry booed, ignored and cheered" isn't quite as punchy.

I actually feared for his safety when Villa took the slightly unusual step of hinting at his inclusion mid Tuesday afternoon on their official web-site.

But as it turned out there was no such hostility, other than 20 minutes of booing from a few hundred angry souls.

After that Barry's committed performance and a rather less than exciting first half saw Barry largely ignored by the majority of the 2,000 Villa fans.

When he left the field after an hour some booed, some clapped and others sat with their hands firmly on their laps not wanting to side either way.

One of the latter, Steve Gough (he runs the away coaches for Premier Ents and incidentally he is running another down to Reading next weekend- so give him a call 01543 426 426) admitted to me today that Barry's performance had won a few fans over but that it would take a lot more of the same for him to be back on side.

It was also pleasing to see Ian Taylor, a modern-day cult figure if ever there was one but now working for Barry's agent Alex Black, mixing with supporters, signing autographs and having his picture taken.

Barry's big test will be if he is included against Odense at Villa Park on Saturday.

Martin O'Neill is certainly looking at that possibility, although he is an unlikely starter. What sort of message would that send out to the likes of Reo-Coker, Young, Petrov and Sidwell?

An even bigger test yet for Barry is the opening day of the Premier League season when a full house at Villa Park will want to voice their anger at his public fight to get away.

But from what we have seen over these last few days Barry can do just that.

What he needs to do now is what he should have done all along. And that is to get his head down, graft on the pitch and say zip-all to the media.

A text message received from Gareth only a few days ago indicates that that is exactly what he intends to do, and in the meantime we can only hope that Villa and Liverpool bang their heads together and get a fee agreed.

Because the worry as I write this on Thursday afternoon is that Portsmouth will sell Sulley Muntari to Inter Milan for £12.7million, with supposed interest from Rangers in Pedro Mendes, and will immediately blast Villa out of the water in terms of both bids and personal terms for Shaun Wright-Phillips and Younes Kaboul.

I spoke to Martin O'Neill yesterday on the telephone and although he won't comment on individual transfer cases it was pleasing to actually hear him admit that Villa have to spend big: "just to stand still."

Incidentally, I'm told Wright-Phillips would jump at the chance of a move to Villa over Pompey.

That will change if an offer of £60,000 a week comes his way from 'appy 'arry.