As someone who loathes the flood of transfer speculation we're forced to swim through for the best part of 10 months of every year, I was actually pleased that cold water was poured on our prospects of trading in the market some time ago. However, with the transfer window coming to a close next week, there are a few signs of movement.

Nathan Baker's Under-20 World Cup adventure will last for at least one more match after England qualified for the knockout stages in Colombia, but Andreas Weimann will be heading back to Europe as Austria finished bottom of their group.
England might consider themselves a little fortunate after squeezing into the knockout phase as one of the best third place finishers thanks to three goalless draws.

The somewhat light pre-season fixture list gets underway for us tomorrow with a familiar trip to the Bescot. It's a game that Shay Given expects to play in and should provide the first clues about Alex McLeish's thinking in terms of tactics and style of play.

It's highly unlikely that we'll have recruited a new left winger by then, so perhaps we'll see how innovative McLeish is too.

The young lions cruised through the group stage of the Hong Kong Soccer 7′s with the best record of all 16 teams; winning all three games, scoring nine and conceding none in the process. Andreas Weimann and Harry Forrester bagged four each and Jonathan Hogg grabbed the ninth.

You can see the full results from the group stage here.

When you drop a club record £18m on a player during any window, but especially in January, there will inevitably be a lot of opinions voiced and a few feathers ruffled. I've read a lot of ill-conceived nonsense that I won't dignify by linking to, but it's fair to say that outside of Villa circles the reaction has been decidedly mixed.