Aston Villa vs Sheffield United Preview

Aston Villa will be looking to continue their impeccable run at home when they welcome Sheffield United to Villa Park this Friday.

The Clarets and Blues come into this tie with a chance to provisionally move to the top of the league table having kept themselves one point behind Arsenal at the top of the table thanks to a 2-1 comeback win over Brentford in their last game. In that game, the ‘Villans’ lived up to their moniker as they picked up a straight red card and five yellows, including one for boss Unai Emery, who admitted he has to assess his side’s behaviour.

Despite their ill-discipline, the hosts are in good mood at Villa Park, where they are currently enjoying a club-record run of 15 straight home PL victories. That run culminated in 1-0 wins over last season’s top-two sides Arsenal and Manchester City. And so many Villa faithful will hope their side can give them the gift of another comprehensive win.

However, Sheffield United will have other ideas when they travel to Birmingham on Friday. The visitors, who have picked up just one win from their opening three games since the dramatic return of Chris Wilder (W1, L2), will be hoping for better here as he attempts to drag his side off the bottom of the table.

But his side have now failed to score in a joint league-high seven games and are sitting just two points better off than where the infamous Derby side of 2007/08 – statistically the worst side in PL history – were at this stage; it is difficult to make a case for them to bridge the six-point gap to 17th. Perhaps exacerbating a sense of impending doom is that the blunt Blades have conceded 13 times whilst scoring just once in reply across their last four away games.

Other fixtures taking place this week in the Premier League Fixtures:

Premier League Table