I believe the pre-match press conference ahead of the Boxing Day game against Tottenham is taking place today, so brace yourself for cherry picked Houllier quotes to filter out over the next few days, sending people predisposed to fly in rages into those very rages.

He said WHAT?!?!? ARRRGHHHHH!!!

Oh, wait. I see. Well that makes sense I suppose. Okay, carry on.

I’m not entirely sure where the quotes on Brad Friedel came from yesterday, but they also look to have been taken slightly out of context. I may be guilty of jumping the gun a little myself in yesterday’s post.

Maybe, maybe not. I’ve taken expanded quotes from BBC once more, stripped the fluff and re-ordered the sentences to form a more conversational flow. As ever, here’s as much as I could find, make your own mind up:

Gerard Houllier on Brad Friedel

I’ve spoken to him and said ‘obviously, you’re 39, so I need to look to the future but I’m perfectly happy with you’. If Brad is fine in February, then we will keep him. We’ve told him that, if he feels OK.

If he feels fine, why not? We’ll ask him in February. If he feels alright, we’ll keep him. If he stays, he’ll stay as the first-team keeper.

We are looking at several goalkeepers – and we’ve told Brad. We’re looking for a keeper for the future.

Perhaps I shouldn’t read too much into scouting goalkeepers at this time of year. After all, if we found ourselves in some sort of mess next year, we’d all be asking why the management team didn’t do something ahead of time. I still think it suggests Guzan is unlikely to take over the #1 gloves though and might well be considering his career over the remainder of the season.

Ashley Young

James Nursey at the Mirror offers his reasoning behind his belief that we will sell Ashley Young in January. It’s an argument based on an appeal to authority; the authority being himself based on a track record of accuracy he litters throughout the article.

You can scan through this Google search of Nursey’s Mirror articles on Villa if you like to get a feel for the sort of stories he’s written and somehow forgotten to mention for one reason or another. Only if you have time to kill, it’s not that interesting. Although, it’s funny how many headlines start with ‘Why’.

It doesn’t take much to make these sort of “predictions”; there are only two outcomes. By the 1st of February, James will either be correct and Ash will be employed by another club – in which case this “prediction” will be added to the portfolio for future use, establishing credibility – or Ash will still be at Aston Villa and this article will be forgotten.

We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

I saw many journalists giving each other virtual high fives and back slaps on Twitter after correctly “predicting” that Wayne Rooney would in fact stay at Man Utd. Well done, you picked tails and it was tails. I saw at least one blogger doing the same with Carlos Tevez in the last few days.

Brilliant.  The two players staying might not have been the most likely outcome, but it was still only one of two scenarios: stay or go. There’s nothing to lose by going all in, no one remembers unless you tell them later.

So, why not? I’ll stick my neck out and state categorically that Ashley Young will not be sold in January and then if I’m right in February, I’ll link to this post and we can all revel in my own brilliance. If I’m wrong, we’ll never speak of this again. Okay?

Actually, to cover my arse, in a week or so, when you’ve had time to forget about this one, I’ll write a post predicting that Ash will leave in January and then I’ll have something to link to in February either way.

We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.