Know your history: The colour of socks

It’s Friday evening, we’re on an international break and the long, long summer transfer window has finally closed; time for something a little light hearted. How about the colour of socks?

Yes, I really did this, but I cannot possibly stress this enough: I really, really don’t care about the colour of socks on our home kit. Or our away kit for that matter.

However, a lot of people apparently really do and are still venting their spleens on the interwebz about

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Premier League squad depth comparison: All 20 teams

Now that the summer transfer window has finally closed, we know what our squad looks like for the season. Or at least until January. A lot of fans are a little nervous; what if we get a few serious injuries?

What if we don’t though? Isn’t our main core of players pretty strong?

Here’s a similar thought: What if one or two of our immediate competitors suffer injuries? How deep does their quality run?

We’ll get confirmation of the 25-man Premier League squads

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Transfer window closes: Hutton and Jenas join Aston Villa

The summer transfer window has finally come to a close, Alan Hutton and Jermaine Jenas both joined from Tottenham to complete our squad for the coming season.

Hutton joins on a four year contract and will be Luke Young’s natural replacement, especially with news of Eric Lichaj’s hip injury keeping him out for the next four months.

Jenas has come on a season long loan, presumably with an option to buy at the end of the season if he works out. He

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It’s the final countdown: Summer transfer roundup

It’s a little over 10 hours to go before the rumour mongers and speculation, erm, spasmos take themselves a much needed break. At least for a fortnight or so, then they’ll be back with a vengeance, leading all the way up to the perennially underwhelming January window.

Until then, I thought I’d summarise this summer’s movements to date, borrowing from the transfers page, and throw in anything that happens during the course of this afternoon and evening. And by that I

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Broken hearted: Makoun follows Young and Hogg out the exit door

You’ll all be aware by now that Luke Young and Jonathan Hogg left Villa, joining QPR and Watford respectively, over the weekend; both signing three year contracts. Although I missed it at the time, Young’s move did warrant an announcement, Hogg apparently slipped away in the night.

I noticed during pre-season that Hogg had been removed from the squad pages on the official site, perhaps that’s got something to do with it. Then again, they’ve currently got Gary Gardner listed as

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Aston Villa 0 Wolves 0: Herd the Man of the Match in bore draw

The fans who stayed away from this dirge fest in droves were the lucky ones; only surprise inclusion Chris Herd and Gabby Agbonlahor provided anything worth getting excited about. The ~12k empty seats generated more talking points during the game than the “action” on it.

There’s nothing to say about the first half, it was truly awful. I’m assuming that Alex McLeish read the riot act at half time, the home side were much improved after the break and, for 20

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Teamsheets: Aston Villa vs Wolves

This is a big, big game for Alex Mcleish today. The last of a run of home games and a derby against an opponent that caused his predecessor so many problems. It’s also something of a “top of the table” encounter and the winner, should there be one, will get boasting rights over the rest of the league for at least a while today.

With Luke Young unavailable, McLeish has opted to start Chris Herd ahead of Eric Lichaj and Habib

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Luke Young, Andreas Weimann and Gary Cahill

As someone who loathes the flood of transfer speculation we’re forced to swim through for the best part of 10 months of every year, I was actually pleased that cold water was poured on our prospects of trading in the market some time ago. However, with the transfer window coming to a close next week, there are a few signs of movement. There may be some ins and outs at Villa Park yet.

Luke Young

Luke Young is now confirmed to be

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Video: Ajax vs Aston Villa highlights in the NextGen Series

Highlights from the NextGen Series will more than likely be a little thin on the ground and will rely heavily on the participating clubs’ own media departments. Fortunately, Ajax TV have done a good job of putting together this video from our 2-0 loss in Amsterdam in the opening game last week.

Of course, there might be a little bias in the edit, but this seems a fair reflection of the game from as much as I could gather. Mickey van

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