Martin O’Neill has revealed that he’s not looking to bring in any new faces during January and is equally uninterested in selling anyone from his current squad. So, if salivating over potential new signings in your bag, what’s left to speculate about?

And in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… ‘Aston Villa haven’t got any money!!  Randy Lerner isn’t “investing” enough money into the club.’

Call me a cynic, call me clairvoyant if you like, but should MON prove true to his latest words when the window closes at the end of January, I’m almost wiling to guarantee that this old meme and its variants will re-surface.

Now, this could be a little bit of kidology on MON’s part, I swear he casually mentioned bringing in one or two fairly recently. Maybe that was the bluff and this is a double-bluff. Wait, is that right? I don’t know, but we must all surely appreciate by now that MON will always keep is cards close enough to his chest that we’ll still be none the wiser after the river has been drawn.

However, you can read his words in full at the Birmingham Mail, but I’ll cherry pick some parts that interested me and comment afterward.

At this moment we have been linked with a few players. In turn, our players have been linked with other clubs. I would be trying to keep as many as possible, particularly because of the immediate games coming up. If something happened to one of our players that was worth talking about, it will be treated on its merit.

Players generally these days know before managers and if there is someone adamant about leaving, then I’d have to take that as I find it. Would I rule out buying anyone? I’d have to answer ‘yes’ at this moment.

Seems pretty straightforward. He doesn’t plan on anyone leaving, but if a player is determined to go and engineers a move for themselves in collaboration with their agents, which frequently how these things work, then MON will look at it and react accordingly. Obviously if someone leaves he’ll be wanting to replace them. Well, it seems fairly obvious to me, but it could well just be me.

Onto the subject of Nicky Shorey and Isaiah Osbourne, both out on loan, some revelation of the strategy and thinking:-

He [Shorey] is still on loan at Nottingham Forest. Obviously we didn’t cup tie him or Isaiah Osbourne. Both of them have got a couple of weeks left at the minute. I think with Isaiah it’s if we want it to go to February 15, and Nicky’s can go a bit longer because they have got continuous 93 days if that is the case. The good thing as far as I’m concerned, after 28 days – which has lapsed in both of their cases – then I have got the option to bring them back.

Selling Shorey is not something that I was looking to be doing at this minute, but nothing concrete has developed. But, again, if an offer came in, I would sit down with Nicky and his agent to discuss it if that is the case. But I am not actively seeking [to sell him].

There have been people at every single game that he has played and also I’ve got the matches on DVD anyway. I think that Nicky thought that when Stephen Warnock arrived obviously his chances would be limited at the time.

But he is capable of fighting back. I think he is enjoying it immensely at Forest and he’s playing and that’s what he wants to do. I think going forward he has done very well and I think that if he tightens up his game defensively he has loads and loads to offer and I think he’s tried to do that.

Again, pretty straightforward strategy of getting players playing time, but keeping the options as open as possible.  Interesting that Villa have people at the games watching him while he’s out on loan.

However, if I were a betting man, the one thing I think will be plucked from this interview is MON’s answer to the question of whether the limited activity this window is due to lack of funding from the owner – “I will keep any conversations I’ve had with Mr Lerner on that subject confidential, if you don’t mind.”

Ah ha!! I knew it!!! Now, where’s my tin foil hat??