Tommy Who?

Martin Laursen shares a nationlity with the sullen keeper, but that's about it.

He always has time for a chat, and is usually smiling.

He walks past and I try and wind him up that he might be playing at right-back on Saturday.

Martin shares the joke- or at least I think he was joking - when worryingly he says he is, actually, playing at right-back on Saturday???!!!

Wilfred Bouma is next to show, no words but a warm smile for all.

Then John Robertson waltzes down the steps, laughing out loud.

It turns out that he has just read a joke book and he revels in a funny one about a mother getting on a bus with a baby in her arms.

It's a cracker, but I'd better leave the joke there...

I was up at the training ground to see Martin O'Neill and ended up spending 40 minutes in the great man's company.

Nothing unusual in that. It's a weekly thing.

All sorts of topics come under the miscroscope: we begin with the usual fitness updates, to transfer plans, Stuart Pearce, the poor run of results, the Bolton game......Unlike some managers I could mention, there isn't too much that Villa's present boss won't talk about.

For some reason the conversation had drifted to Peter Withe getting the nod to go to Spain '82 ahead of Cyrille Regis, who years later would sign for O'Neill at Wycombe.

"Were you at Spain '82?", I tease of a man who had led his country, gloriously, to the quarter-finals.

"I was there, but only watching", he answers. The pressures of three defeats haven't dimmed his sense of humour.

It's that humour, the humble personality, the meticulous planning to detail, the long hours... they all combine to make O'Neill both the manager and the person he is.

Suffice to say he understands that criticism will always come his way when results are poor.

This summer promises to be the biggest in recent memory, and the most important perhaps in a generation- although I suppose every season we are saying the same.

But this summer I detect a lot of comings and a few goings.

Ahh, the summer.... long warm nights, barbecues, cricket and a meaningless football tournament on the box where England' fans only passion will be in seeing Germany struggle.

Denmark won't be there either.

And by the time June comes around, no better make that May 11th, Sorensen will be long gone through those glass doors.

He'll be long gone out of the car park, he'll have long since turned right out of the entrance to Bodymoor, he'll have long gone past the left turn at the top of the road and he'll have long since whizzed past the Belfry towards the motorway- driving quicker than Jack Mcquicksilver, the fastest shooter in the west.