The double bubble post-mortem is coming but before we get to that, we have more speculation. This time, our very own Carlos Cuéllar is attracting interest from Spanish giants Real Madrid. Apparently.
Now, with speculation you can either do one of two things; completely ignore it or take it with a pinch of salt. What I like to do is look at the source then determine the legitimacy of the speculation.
This story comes from Mirror Football. Mirror Football is owned by Trinity Mirror who also own Trinity Mirror Midlands who publish the Birmingham Mail, who employ and pay Bill Howell.
Now, I'm not saying that one bad apple is spoiling the whole sports news business of Trinity Mirror, but I have more faith in Dave Armitage at the Daily Star than I do in anything published by anything remotely linked to Bill Howell. Sorry Bill, it's not your fault.
These type of papers and websites will actually give targets to people to publish a set number of stories a day and what they do is trawl the dubdubdub for something that will court controversy. It is their job to do this so they generate traffic to their respective websites which in turn generates clicks on ads on their site. It's also so they can sell space - more traffic more value, but it isn't real and you know it.
Think of the paper like Jordan; she looks nice but you know they're not real and it's all a front.
So, I take this with less than a pinch of salt, I take it with a grain. Actually, I take this story with a nannobacteria sizes piece of salt and I don't even throw it, I just suck up speculation like this and spit it out. In fact, I can shit this story and it is such a nothing story, that I wouldn't even know I've shit myself.
King Carlos is making that centre back position his and while I have no doubt that he'd like to play for Real Madrid if given the opportunity, I fancy he quite likes it at Villa and if he can make the Span squad while playing for us, what is the value add to playing in Spain?
Right, post mortems coming up and I've just seen a headline about hailing our heroes. Can that be true? Surely not. I'm off to investigate.