Another international break has come and gone, time to focus on the bread and butter stuff. If you watched England labour to three points against Wales at Wembley this week, as a Villa fan, the line-up may have looked a lot like the image below. It probably stung quite a bit for most of us.

This is a relatively rare experience for us, but it’s been coming and it’s easy to lose sight of an important fact amongst the bitterness. In the past, we’ve rarely seen Villa players, former or current, in the England line up in such numbers.

Exactly half of England’s starting outfield players on Tuesday have very strong, and recent, connections to Aston Villa. That says an awful lot about the quality of players that we’ve been able to attract to the club and develop in recent seasons.

The trick, of course, is holding on to them, but that should be the focus of attention going forwards rather than looking back at those who have left with regret.

And there is much to look forward to. There’s no danger of him making the England team, but Richard Dunne put in an immense performance for the Irish national side in Russia. On his day, he’s a monster and there have been signs that he could be back to his best this season.

Gary Cahill may be the one that got away, and he’s clearly a superb defender who is still improving, but he left our club more than three and a half years ago, the time to get over it has long since past. Dunne, and alongside him James Collins, has shown that there’s still a season or two of top notch defending in the legs yet.

Another player who won’t be showing up on an England teamsheet is Barry Bannan. I didn’t see it myself, but I hear that he was quite brilliant in what was his first competitive start for Scotland in their qualifier against Lithunania.

Chris Herd’s Scottish heritage has become of interest to Bannan’s national set up and he may soon face a Ciaran Clark style choice of national teams. Personally, I hope he chooses his nation of birth as they offer a greater shot at qualifying for a World Cup in my opinion, but it won’t be a straightforward decision if he is faced with it.

I also didn’t see the England Under-21s play, but while Marc Albrighton seems to have fallen out of favour at the moment, Nathans Baker and Delfouneso both featured in the 4-1 win over Israel, with the Fonz scoring from the spot late on. Gary Gardner was also handed his debut at this level and he continues to impress everywhere he goes.

I could go on, but you get the point. Aside from learning from mistakes, there’s absolutely nothing to be gained from looking longingly to the past. Things could be an awful lot worse.

Everton

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t swap places with an Evertonian for anything right now. We’re at Goodison Park tomorrow and the kick off will follow a planned protest march by their fans at the running of their club. Who knows what sort of effect that will have on the home side.

David Moyes looks likely to have little choice but to throw new loan signing Denis Stracqualursi in at the deep end. As I understand it, he had one sublime season with Tigre back in Argentina, but it remains to be seen whether he can bring that form to the Premier League. It’s a big ask for a South American to adapt to life in England so quickly.

The only other new face Moyes brought in before the summer transfer window closed was another loan signing, Royston Drenthe. He can operate anywhere down the left side, is pretty zippy and can be a real handful on his day. However, there are reasons why Real Madrid loaned him to Hercules last season, where he fell out with coaches and management in short order, and there are reasons why they’re loaning him out again, this time to Everton.

The Blue side of the city will be quick to play down Mikel Arteta’s deadline day defection to Arsenal, but there was something very symbolic about the nature of his exit for me. Like a rat deserting a sinking ship? Yeah, something like that.

Regardless, Everton are notoriously poor at the beginning of the season and are far from in a cosy situation off the pitch however you look at it. They lost their first game of the season at home to newly promoted QPR. They were quite fortunate to come away from Ewood Park with a 1-0 victory thanks to Blackburn missing two penalties. The man who provided the winner that day being Arteta, also from the spot.

Quite frankly, Everton are low hanging fruit right now; we ought to be going there looking to gorge ourselves on their wonderful ripe, juicy flesh, but will Alex McLeish be bold enough to really go for it?

Did you hear that sound? That was the needle scratching across the record.

We shall see tomorrow. It’s tricky to get a feel for whether our own two new boys, Alan Hutton and Jermaine Jenas, will be in the starting line up, but they’ll surely be included in the 18. It may be that Herd keeps his place, he’s earned it and Hutton obviously lacks match fitness, but Jenas might just start.

The good news is that Darren Bent almost certainly will start and, after struggling to make much impact during the last two games and missing out with England, he’s about due a performance.

I hear he loves munching down on a ripe, juicy peach too! Nom nom nom.