It feels like Villa haven’t played in a month. Whenever these international breaks come they are a disruption to the league season. Then, I know for me once the games start I shift gears and get into the games. Thursday I was practically screaming for Brad Guzan to be given the #1 shirt for the US after Tim Howard was poor on two of the three goals he conceded in Costa Rica. Luckily for US supporters, Mexico suffered an embarrassing home loss that same night, and on Tuesday Mexico lost to a much improved US team.

And after a week of revelling in World Cup qualification and reveling in the ineptitude of Mexico, it’s time to shift gears again. It will be nice to see Villa play a side outside of the top six. So far this season Newcastle have been uninspired at best. Just a year or two ago it felt like they were the template for teams outside of the contemporary top six to make a push for Champions League football. Now their brief flirtation with competence and stability looks to be over.

In a sense we have followed the Newcastle template by blending European players with young English ones. This past summer the club was even more Euro heavy than last, it is still way too early to judge what kind of impact they will have.

The other highlight of this past international break was the Stiliyan Petrov charity game at Celtic Park. If you didn’t get emotional watching that, you clearly do not have a heart. Full credit for Celtic to selling out a charity game honoring a man who hasn’t played at the club for over seven years.

Gabby taking out Louis Tomlinson of One Direction on a fairly benign challenge was the other lasting memory. Somebody did mention on Twitter did mention that perhaps he was sick because he had to run around for 20 minutes marking Gabby and not from the challenge itself. Seems like a fair point to me, but that image may have killed any chance he had of a solo career or being taken seriously by anyone above the age of 15.

The Mirror as usual covered themselves in glory running as story about One Direction fans “threatening” Gabby on Twitter. They must not have noticed that “Gabby” was following Cleveland Indians OF/1B Nick Swisher, Britney Spears, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and none of his teammates.

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