National team lottery, the return of the Bruce and competition time

It seems like ages since I've posted. Then I remembered ... international break. Wouldn't it be lovely if these were just scrapped and we could focus on proper football? I mean, it's proper football that creates this elite group, why should this elite group then determine when proper football is played and not played.

Lets take it one step further, why don't we make internationals just amateur players. That would be more fun. We could even make it a lottery so anyone can buy a ticket. The resulting match could create the next tier of F list celebrities.

Hell, I'd tune in instead of tuning off if it was a guy from my local playing for England. I'm seriously not interested in these overpaid tossers wearing the shirt. And yes, I'm in London today and just had a pint at lunch. Or three.

But enough about my lunch time drinking. Now we look to Monday and the return of Steve Bruce. He'll probably not get a good reception from many here and at Villa Park, I suspect they'll be searching bags, but for doing a horrible job, he's got his Newcastle side sitting four place and four points above us. Regardless of what happens on Monday night, he'll still be ahead of us.

And I'm sure it's going to make for a few interesting comments below, but we should always just remember, Dean Smith is the manager and he's my Aston Villa manager.

Competition time

So that out of the way, how do you fancy winning £300 of Luke clobber? You probably know, but Luke came out with the Dapper Villan range recently and Luke, not only a top lad, a big fan of the blog, often referring to it in conversations and the board room, has offered up one lucky reader the chance to fix Christmas gifts for most of his or her family.

All you have to do is guess the attendance of the eight Premier League fixtures this Saturday. Whoever is closest wins. And if there is more than one guess that is equally as close, it will be the poster that posts his or her guess first.

So guess below and in the comment that you guess, just put the number. If there is anything other than the guess it may be missed by me and as such it wont be counted as a submission. Any other queries, ask me and I'll try to get back to you.