Cleverley completes Aston Villa move

When is a window not a window? When it slammed shut fourteen hours ago and yet people are still blithely skipping through it, without a care in the world, sealing transfers hither and yon. Tom Cleverley, for example, has just had his loan move to Aston Villa approved, and so brings to a close one of the more frustrating Manchester United careers of recent memory.

Reports suggest that Villa have the chance to purchase Cleverley for £7.5m in January, but since his contract expires at the end of this season it's almost unthinkable that he'll return to Old Trafford. So that's a spell at United comprising 79 appearances over 5 years as a professional, 5 goals along the way, and a Premier League title-winners' medal from 2012/13.

Ultimately, he probably won't be missed. He doesn't take the blame for his own over-promotion, which came too soon into an understaffed midfield. Nor does he take the blame for the fact that United are still stuck with Anderson. He does take the blame for deciding that nobody understood him and that he was an under-appreciated genius. But at least he appears to have come to his senses and dropped his age demands. Ta-ra, Tom.