Aston Villa welcomes Liverpool

Aston Villa welcomes Liverpool at the Villa Park in Birmingham in a game from the 11th round of the English Premier League. The visitors are the favourites here, but we don’t think it’s going to be really that easy for them.

Aston Villa returned to the Premier League this season and they are among the newcomers in the competition. Of course, historically they are one of England’s big teams, but now the situation is a little bit different.

Right now Aston Villa are 15th in the Premier League standings with 11 points and a record of three wins, two draws and five losses. They enjoyed two consecutive wins against Norwich City and Brighton & Hove Albion, but in their last fixture the Villans suffered their fifth lose for the season. Dean Smith’s team visited the champion Manchester City at the Etihad and got crushed with 0-3. Nothing shameful about that, of course. The fact is that in their last four games in all competitions Aston Villa achieved three wins.

On Wednesday Villa progressed for the League Cup, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers with 2-1 at the Villa Park.

How you probably know, right now Liverpool are leaders in the Premier League with 28 points, being 6 points ahead of the second Manchester City. At this moment Liverpool are the only team in the league being still unbeaten – they have a record of nine wins and one draw. In the previous round Jurgen Klopp’s team hosted Tottenham Hotspur at the Anfield and achieved a 2-1 win. Jordan Henderson and Mohamed Salah scored for the European champions.

Yesterday Liverpool participated in a pure thriller against Arsenal in a match from the 1/8-finals of the League Cup. The Reds qualified for the 1/4-finals after a thrilling 5-5 draw at the Anfield and a win after penalty kicks. Arsenal’s Shkodran Mustafi scored himself an own goal, while Divock Origi scored a brace for Liverpool. James Milner and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain also scored for the hosts.

Although most likely Liverpool will win the three points against Aston Villa on Saturday, we expect that the hosts will fight as much as they can for something more in this game. We will see.