Unsurprisingly, with the pre-season schedule underway, I’ve started to spot one or two Villa fans crouching in corners gibbering about lack of signings, hyperventilating with a paper bag over their mouths. Does that describe you? Read on.

I did this before last year, so I’ve updated it with the data from 2009. All you have to do is look at today’s date in the left hand column and then scan across to the right to see how many players we had signed on this day in the past.

For example, today is July 19th and on this day last year we had made one signing; Stewart Downing, but Gareth Barry signed for City six weeks earlier and the fees cancelled each other out. By this day in 2008 we had also made just one signing; Steve Sidwell, a signing viewed by some observers as a preemptive replacement for Barry who seemed destined, for many, to be heading to Anfield. By this time 3 years ago we had signed Reo-Coker and Marlon Harewood, the latter very much being an opportunistic gazumping of a deal taking Harewood to Wigan.

You get the point.

Deep breaths, everything will be OK.