We really haven’t had chance to see that much of him, but Ciaran Clark has already won himself an army of fans among the Villa faithful and beyond. I’m sure all fans will be as delighted as I am to hear that Ciaran has just signed a new contract at Villa, extending his stay until 2014.

He was inside the last 12 months of his contact and was starting to gain the attention of other clubs besides also being snapped up to play for the Republic of Ireland, switching allegiances from England.

Great news, he’s definitely a player mature beyond his 21 years, but if his development continues – and picking up senior international experience with Ireland with Richard Dunne as a mentor won’t hurt – he’s going to be an absolute monster for Villa in coming years.

In other player news, Stiliyan Petrov will not need surgery on his knee, but will still be out for around three months anyway. Luke Young is back from his hamstring injury and will be included in the squad this weekend, but Habib Beye may not be as he is nursing an ankle injury.

The Mirror claim that Steve Sidwell was scheduled to have scar tissue on his Achilles “scraped” yesterday (Thursday), the “op was booked”, but Houllier has asked the midfielder to “play through the pain” since we’re short of players right now. (I’m not linking to it since they can’t get details about Stephen Ireland correct in their efforts to pad the story out with crappy narrative).

Ian has a look at the long injury list, although, as I say, it sounds like Luke Young is closer to returning to action than it says in Ian’s list.  I think it has to be said that we’ve been particularly fortunate over the last few years with injuries and perhaps a lot of the criticism MON received for sticking with the same team so much is a tad unfair since not many managers have the luxury of being able to.  Maybe they’d do the same if they could.