By Tony Attwood
Our next game is away to Aston Villa on Monday 31st at 8pm. This is last of the second round of league matches. Villa like Arsenal have played just one league game this season, but lost it spectacularly, 4-0 to Brighton and Hove Albion,
Last season Villa came in fourth, scoring 15 goals fewer than Arsenal, conceding 22 goals more and thus having a goal difference that was 37 worse than Arsenal’s. They ended up 20 points behind Arsenal who had the best away record in the league, winning 11, drawing five and losing just three. Arsenal scored 30 away goals and conceded 16 in the season.
Looking at the last season Aston Villa beat Arsenal 2-1 in December but if we go back to the last time the clubs played each other right near the start of the season (24 August 2024) Arsenal won 0-2. Last season out of the 19 home games, Villa won 12, drew two and lost five, having a goal differnce of +10 by the end of the campaign and thus had 38 points
Arsenal away from home also gained 38 points (11 wins and 5 draws) but Arsenal had a four goal better goal difference away from home than Villa had at home.
The main summer transfer for Aston Villa was the signing of Nicholas Jackson from Chelsea for £65. They also brought in
- Johan Manzambi: Forward from Freiburg (£50m approx)
- João Gomes: Midfielder from Wolverhampton Wanderers (£35m)
- Zion Suzuki: Goalkeeper from Parma (£26m)
- Matteo Ruggeri: Defender from Atlético Madrid (£21m)
- Leon Goretzka: Midfielder (free)
- Aaron Wan-Bissaka: Defender from West Ham United (loan)
Meanwhile, we can also note that there have been 203 games between the two clubs, of which Arsenal have won 87, and Villa have won 71, with 45 draws. The last game played between the two sides at Villa Park was on 6 December last year, and Villa won. So it must be our turn.
In terms of injuries, Arsenal are very close to the foot of the injury league for a change, with just three men down. William Saliba is going to be out for quite a while, Jurrien Timber is considered to be making good progress but is not ready to play, and Bruno Guimaraes is training on the pitch but seems unlikely to be ready to play just yet.
Aston Villa have six players out of whom only Tammy Abraham has a slight chance of being on the bench. The others missing are Amadou Onana, Joao Gomes da Silva, Johan Manzambi, Brian Madjo, and Leon Bailey. As I read things, Abraham is most likely to be on the bench.
One of the interesting factors I notice, however, ahead of this game is that Aston Villa have been having a really rough ride of things in the build-up to this match. Admittedly, some of the games have not themselves been easy going but even so the results don’t actually look that hopeful for them.
They started out on 7 August with a friendly away to Bayern Munich, which they lost 2-1. Then on 12 August they played the Super Cup final against PSG, which again they also lost 2-1.
After that, they played Borussia M’gladbach away and again lost 2-1, and then finally played Brighton & Hove Albion and managed to lose 4-0.
Of course, many such games can have excuses for their results, especially as different leagues start their full season at different times, and so clubs are in a different state of preparedness. But in this case the German league season began on Friday, August 28, 2026, so not so very different from the Premier League season, and we might have expected Villa to be a bit more ready.
Yet Villa won the Europa League last season, and one might have thought they might be a little more energised by now than the results thus far suggest.
Villa certainly have been improving over the seasons, for after a period up to 2022 in which they regularly came in the bottom half of the table, in 2023 they came 7th, in 2024 it was 4th, in 2025 it was 6th and then last season it was 4th again. So they are not league winners, but neither are they mugs, and they most certainly will want to put in a good show against Arsenal for this second league game of the season. If nothing else than to show what a good manager we let go. (Although that’s not actually something I agree with).
More tomorrow
