Frederick

Well, it's Mad Timmy Sherwood on a three year contract but in truth there's been no desirable, obtainable candidate ringing in my ears all these months. I don't get excited by new managers and this time will certainly be no different, we all know he's a rogue Cockney gunslinger with wide eyes and a fast tongue, which is unappealing in itself but none of that is likely to determine our fate either way. Good luck, Timber, you're going to need it.

Finally.

The Augsburg performance was absolute sewage, it made my blood boil to levels not seen since rediscovering my Sasa Curcic Villa away shirt in the back of a cupboard. You can't help feel bad for (Less Than) Ciro Immobile because he least gives off the impression that he gives a damn but his forlorn expression when something goes wrong (meaning approximately fifty times a chuffin' game) feels like it's destined to be the abiding image of the season. His toe curling, inadvertent cushioned back pass when mere yards from goal in stoppage time nearly brought up my dinner. Then again, at least Augsburg are genuinely a good team, a loss against nothingmen Freiburg at the weekend would feel truly apocalyptic.

Erm, Carles Gil would like a word! A goal of the season contender on home debut!

I'd have taken him at Villa before yesterday, now I'd take the team being built around him.

Married to some anonymous looking billionaire within eighteen months.

So I actually live in a world where an article entitled "Joey Barton - how Sanchez has won me over" can exist sans irony. Next week, "Titus Bramble - okay, Bobby Moore could play a bit"?!

Was the appearance of Plastico Baggio an homage to former Mackems great Beachy Ball's heroics against the same side a few years back? Presumably the sight of Heaps O'Excrement in the Villa starting XI today was an homage to Paul Lambert's love of Shetland Ponies. <_<

Thrills and spills everywhere I turn, back to back home 0-0s with Sunderland and Palace! Eleven goals in twenty games is a jaw dropping statistic however you try and slice it and the thing is, harmlessly mediocre though I generally regard as these days, we're actually on a trajectory to oblivion if we keep this up. Positives: Okore's becoming a fast favourite of mine, Sanchez is 90% class/10% liability while none other than Cieran Clark is having a glorious, surprising run of good form. I'm pleased as punch for the lad. Had a bit of a giggle at the outraged fans of a subsidiary/tax write off franchise that haven't even kicked a ball yet moping about Totally Frank staying on at City 'til the end of the 'EPL' season. Presumably Stevie G. will do the exact same thing to sneak a championship medal onto his C.V. next year while Liverpool linger in the shadows, quietly weeping to themselves whilst publicly declaring that they're fine with it.

Well wipe my brow and call me Nancy, it's Pards to Palace, Pulis to Brazil 1970, Tiny Tim to no where and no one to Newcastle!

Hard to believe this giant of the global game currently don't have a manager! Does anyone know where I can order the Best Of Pepe Mel Boxset?! Alan Irvine, we hardly knew ye; Tim Sherwood, let us reacquaint ourselves with thee!

Oh Paul, how many more utterly rancid performances does Lardo N'Zogbia have to put in before you realise that Jack Grealish, though very raw, is light years more likely to help us score some goals?

Taxi for Neil "no eyebrows, no job" Warnock.

A deservedly miserable end to an unfathomably bad four and a half months for BVB. Maybe everyone's just so busy in their heads planning their respective departures to 'greater' pursuits next summer that they forgot about the meantime. Lewandowski never did that and let me tell you, none of these guys are fit to tie big Robert's laces. A lot of reputations are dying in the dust right now, not least JK who has the mother of all winter breaks ahead. Any well wisher who wants to romanticise this as some inevitable 'Dortmund being Dortmund' charming, lovable decline I urge to wake up pretty quickly. Meanwhile a certain elderly Dutch turkey necked weirdo with a bad dye job rolled into town and failed to comprehend what even El Moyesy grasped implicitly: beat Aston Villa like the feeble beasts we are for you are Yanited and that is what Yanited do. Not even Magna Carta is as fundamental to British life as us losing this game is, it's like observing traffic lights, you don't even think about it, you just quietly observe and move on. But not this time, not even a referee with subjective leanings could dishearten Lambo's lions. Having said that, indicative of how rubbish he is was the fact that we looked far more menacing after the Agbonlahor farce. Every supporter I've spoken to said we shouldn't even appeal the red because we'd be better off without him, though that's presumably based on the assumption that Chuck "Le Crap" N'Zogbia doesn't replace him. If I were a Sunderland supporter I'd frame a copy of Pardew's contract over the mantel piece. A minimum of four points every season for eight years? Yes please!

A duel on the patio between Roy Keane and TC23? Like their respective contributions to Aston Villa, how pointless!

What license does Phil Neville have to commentate on Bundesliga games? The same one Marco Reus has to drive!

Perhaps it's perception over reality but Sunderland's record against the fellow strugglers last season seemed curiously poor. A Hail Mary win like at Chelsea and point that should've been three at City were tremendous efforts that ultimately proved telling but I don't know if I'd bet the proverbial whatever on them beating Burnley at home. That being said, I'd be surprised if they ended up deep in the relegation picture this time out and though I'm skeptical of Poyet I agree that a year of incremental improvement is lot better than being a fiasco, as was so recently the case.

Last sixteen of the Gazprom Chumbawumba League draw

Mignolet? More like Me-no-play!

Back to back wins for Lambert's lambchops, Dortmund off the bottom of the register and Liverpool out of the Champions League: thanks Santa!

Book duly promoted, Villa duly dropped from the Keane portfolio. Stunned, I tell you, stunned.

Don't worry, Dazza brings plenty of padding all of his own these days. Quite a remarkable Villa career, a near demigod at the beginning under Hou, then an injury that seemed to completely hit him for six under Eck, then the Lambert genius captaincy appointment/demotion bait and switch, then the inevitably doomed Fulham loan spell and now this. I even posted a farewell to the geezer about a year ago and likable chap though he has always seemed, now I just wish someone would take the old wounded mutt 'round back to put him out of his misery.

Wahey, our lowest home league attendance for fifteen years. Needless to say I was snug and sound at home watching it all with my hands over my eyes. This lead to me to learn that our smallest crowd in the 'EPL era' was in fact none other than a desperately scrappy 2-1 win against Sheffield Wednesday, a tetchy, wintery encounter of which I had the 'privilege' of attending. No doubt SympathysSilhouette will recall the great Belgian hitman Gilles de Bilde's net bulging penalty that briefly put the relegation bound Owls ahead. Most memorable of all was Big Dion Dublin breaking his neck in seemingly the most innocuous fashion imaginable (standing still) though mercifully Paul Merson was on hand to do all the good bits while dear Mark Delaney ran like a cheetah all day long. Y'see, kids, the year was 1762, Tony Blair was Prime Minister, Eiffel 65 were number one, the Queen was still a slip of a girl, the Duke of Wellington was-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Taxi for the royal family of football's plucky, Werther's Original cologned Dickensian chimney sweep millionaire.

Lose to Scotland? ROO MUST BE JOCKING, WEE MAN