"Do I want Coutinho to stay? Yeah course"

Coutinho spent years at Barcelona not performing at the levels he had originally demonstrated at Liverpool. This season, Aston Villa have revitalised his career. He has impressed his current manager, Steven Gerrard, so much so that the Villa boss openly expressed his desire for the player to stay in his squad next season. This was all revealed in his pre match press conference ahead of Villa's upcoming game against Liverpool on Tuesday.

"We want Coutinho here for sure", he affirmed. Following this, Gerrard was questioned on his decision to start Emiliano Buendia ahead of Coutinho for Villa's last match against Burnley, and how the Brazilian felt about it. He responded with: "There's not much ego in this group. They're a good set of lads". He then proceeded to speak more generally about the club's current situation.

"We've just entered the period where it's going to change with five games in a short space of time. Phil and Emi will both get enough game time to keep them satisfied. They know that you can't go Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday all of the time. Phil understood it".

Going back to the main subject in question, should Villa want to buy Coutinho, they will have to meet Barcelona's 40 million euro asking price. According to 'Sport', this figure was written into the loan agreement when the two clubs came together in the January transfer window.