There isn't too much news that broke over the weekend, but I've collected the quick few links that I thought might be of interest to everyone. I'll have a quick-and-dirty analysis of Alan Hutton's passing up in a couple of hours.
- Tottenham loanee Jermaine Jenas will not make his debut with Aston Villa for two weeks. He apparently had a bit of a problem when he showed up to training last week, and tried to play through it. Alex McLeish seems to be taking that news in stride, saying Jenas "decided to come and train such was his keenness to be involved. You can't knock a player for that."
I'm going to have to disagree with Eck here. Playing through injuries is stupid. In the best case scenario, you play at sub-100% and slow down the healing process, and in the worst-case you aggravate the injury. Players are investments in large sums of money, so it makes sense to protect them as much as possible. Playing for the sake of machismo isn't worth it. Jeff and Matthew at Lookout Landing (warning: baseball blog), have written about this better than I can, on a couple of occasions.
To a lesser degree, I think it was obvious to everyone watching this weekend that Darren Bent was still not fully fit. Why, then, was he playing? He let several sitters go by unharmed, and could have hurt himself in the process. What harm could playing Nathan Delfouneso have had? The "grit it out" ethos will forever baffle me. It actively hurts Aston Villa's chances of success both in the present and future.
/gets off soapbox - Dan at Aston Villa Central had his usual great wrap-up of Saturday's match. Make sure to go read it!
- The Sunday Mercury has a story about Alan Hutton being eager to prove himself to a new set of supporters. I think he might be able to, but that may be in large part due to the fact that I am our unflagging optimist around here. That said, he certainly didn't do much against Everton. I hope he can turn things around quickly.