Only 23 days until the fixtures are out

With the exception of the last two play-offs, one of which finished earlier, there is nothing else happening football-wise. There are the few rumours kicking around, but not much else.

But luckiy, there's been a "myriad" of news on rainy, dull, boring Sunday.

Our kids won the Hong Kong Sevens again this year, beating Celtic in the Final. Generally the competition is made up of several unknown foreign teams and a couple of decnt European teams. We beat 2 out of 3 of them (the third being us), with PSV being the other team to fall victim to the Villa Park Academy.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos is the Sunday transfer rumour. The centre-back is 19 years old, plays for AEK Athens and is likely to represent his country in the European championships. It is believed he has a release clause of around £1.2m if the Chairman of AEK leaves.

In sad but true news, former midfielder Paul Birch is fighting against bone cancer. Birch, who was at Villa Park for 11 years from 1980, has fallen considerably ill and is undergoing physiotherapy.

That's maybe not the myriad of news I promised, but it is important news nevertheless and our thoughts go out to Paul and his family.