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By Mike Collett
LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Modern players are too powerful and are fixated on the Champions League, according to Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill.
Speaking at a media open day before the start of the Premier League season which kicked off on Saturday, O'Neill said the game was unrecognisable from the late 1970s and early 1980s when he won the European Cup with Nottingham Forest.
The former Northern Ireland midfielder said he agreed with Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger that the pendulum had swung too far in favour of players.
"The players are in control and it's crazy," O'Neill said on the eve of his third season as Villa boss. "You don't mind if your top player is in control, it's when your mediocre player is in control.
"I'm not talking about any player in particular, I'm just talking about the state of the game in general. A contract's a contract, therefore it should be worth something.
"In my day the players had no power whatsoever and you always felt you were hard done by and that no one was there to support you ... in our day we yearned for a halfway house but now it has gone miles in the other direction."
O'Neill has battled for most of the close season to hang on to Villa captain and England midfielder Gareth Barry, who made no secret of his desire to join Liverpool and play in the Champions League.
He said he never wanted Barry to leave and that it should be possible for clubs outside the big four of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool to hang on to their best players even though they all wanted to earn more money and play in the Champions League.
"Maybe I'm not being realistic but I don't believe it should be an impossibility ... players are driven into this idea that the Champions League is the be-all and end-all of everything," said O'Neill.
GREAT COMPETITION
"It isn't really you know. It's a great competition but it isn't everything.
"There wasn't one person at Villa, myself, the chairman especially, the fans, who would have wanted to see Gareth leave and go to Liverpool or anywhere else.
"But the minute he made it known he wanted to go to Liverpool ... I really couldn't do very much about it and that's where you talk about the powerlessness you feel."
Barry scored for Villa in their UEFA Cup qualifier against Iceland's Hafnarfjordur on Thursday and as he is now cup-tied, even if he did leave he would not be able to play for Liverpool in Europe until February.
"At Forest we won the European Cup twice and those days were fantastic but it was the league competition, the 42 matches we played in that ... that was everything. That's what you lived for, every single Saturday," said O'Neill.
Villa won the European Cup in 1982 and O'Neill said he had to believe he could eventually guide the club back among Europe's elite.
"It will be difficult but as a football club we're going to have to find some way to be able to do it," he said.
"Villa have won the European Cup and that is what I want to aspire to."
