But he is delighted to still lead the way in minutes – and yellow cards.
Milner moved to a best-ever 654 Prem outings when he helped Albion beat Brentford recently.
It was a record the former Aston Villa, Manchester City and Everton midfielder had held since 2017, but Milner took it having played 13,874 minutes less than Barry – the equivalent of just over 150 games.
While some cynics were keen to bring that up at the time, Barry insists that does not bring the validity of Milner’s achievement into question.
“No, there should be no asterisk!” the 45-year-old said, speaking at an Aston Villa Foundation event at TOCA Social in Birmingham.
“It was nice for other stats to come out on the back of James passing the appearance record.
“But we had slightly different careers. The game has changed, it’s really become a bit more of a squad game.
“There’s five subs now. James had a great period of time at Liverpool. He wasn’t going to start every game, but he was always involved in the squads and that’s probably where our careers differed slightly.
“He’s an ex-team-mate at two of my clubs, and also England, I know him exceptionally well.
“And he’s got to where he is for one reason: he’s a proper professional, a very underrated player, and literally is squeezing everything out of his body, because he takes everything to the limit.”
Gareth Barry and James Milner were colleagues for club and country (Image: Nick Potts/PA)
As the player with the most minutes and most yellow cards, Hastings-born Barry hopes he will still be the answer to football-based trivia questions.
He added: “I remember the Covid days when the quizzes were very popular.
“That was definitely one where people kept telling me I was coming up in the quizzes.
“But you never know, they might change the question to minutes or yellow cards or something like that.”
Milner revealed he and Barry exchanged messages after the new appearances record was set.
The Seagulls midfielder said: “He sent me a message after the game and then it was his birthday, so I sent him a message saying happy birthday.
“He just said congrats, and he said he's going away and golfing somewhere, so that sounded good to me.”
:: Gareth Barry is the Angry Ambassador of the new Angry Birds game at TOCA Social which launches in all its UK venues from March 30.