Win the best football scarf ever and Amavi carried off

I didn't consciously decide to take time off from the blog this week, it just sort of happened, because there was little for me to say that everyone else wasn't thinking. Fortunately too, I've not got a target of so many words to write a day or clicks to generate.

Not the like the Birmingham Mail that is. Have you read some of the stories they've generated this week? I've not read, but I've read the headlines. One was 'most improved player under Rémi Garde'. Is that even possible to write after one game?

But it doesn't matter and we know why they're written. What does matter is the positive feeling we've had this week. But I can promise you, it's just us. In my week away, I've been speaking to football fans of other clubs and they're all asking the same question; about his experience in battle like this.

It was only an Arsenal fan that I spoke to that was interested to see him do well but even he said that he was surprised we appointed someone with so little experience. But that doesn't matter now. What matters is the players diets.

International watch

I will say that I was quite happy that we had an international break so soon after the manager joined. It was a chance for him to get to know the players that were staying and also get to know the staff and catch up on his players.

But I'm not so happy now. Jordan Amavi was carried off last night and while I've not been overly impressed with him, I do think he's going to get much better with Garde. I think Garde has some intelligence and I think the players coming from France also have that intelligence. I think the French players will do better with him and we don't want to see him getting carried off.

But that doesn't really matter now either. What matters now is Everton a week tomorrow. Three points there and they'll be Aston Villa fans believing we can challenge for a European place. I'll be one of them.

Competition time

And with Christmas coming up and it starting to get a bit colder, the very nice chaps over at Savile Rogue have offered up a scarf as a competition prize. If you don't own one of these, I can promise you it's best scarf you'll ever have and it comes in claret and blue, but somehow, because of the quality, it doesn't look like a football scarf, if you know what I mean.

And, it really does keep you warm. But to win one, all you have to do is take a guess on the Sweden v Denmark attendance tomorrow night from Stockholm. If you get it right, you win the scarf. If nobody gets it right we're going to go to the closest. And it's in order of guess - so guess quickly. And it's one guess per user. If you take two guesses, we're going to take your first.

And if you don't win - you can always use a very special discount code to get 10% off your order. It's 10VILLABLOG - use it at checkout. And, yes they have other teams so it's a great place for a Christmas present.

And on that, I'm off. Take a guess below. Attendance of Sweden v Denmark tomorrow. You could win the scarf. I'm going to read about footballers diets and ponder on who was the most improved player was last weekend, because it does matter. It really does.