Previously:
Arsenal v Aston Villa: how this referee sees each team: injuries, fouls, tackles, cards
Arsenal v Villa. Comparing this season with the opening 8 games in previous years
Moving on to the home and away figures…
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Arsenal home | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 7 |
| 14 | Aston Villa away | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 8 | -4 | 3 |
We can see that the Arsenal home form is somewhat superior to the Villa away form. Leaving aside league cup games (in which Villa were knocked out by Chelsea) Villa have been slightly below middle of the road away from home.
We do however have a problem with our crowd support, as could be heard for parts of the last game, and I really can’t see how that can be solved. In fact given how some of them are behaving it’s a miracle we win anything at home.
Here are Villa’s games this season….
| Date | Match | Res | Score | Competition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Aug 2021 | Watford v Aston Villa | L | 3-2 | Premier League |
| 21 Aug 2021 | Aston Villa v Newcastle United | W | 2-0 | Premier League |
| 28 Aug 2021 | Aston Villa v Brentford | D | 1-1 | Premier League |
| 11 Sep 2021 | Chelsea v Aston Villa | L | 3-0 | Premier League |
| 18 Sep 2021 | Aston Villa v Everton | W | 3-0 | Premier League |
| 25 Sep 2021 | Manchester United v Aston Villa | W | 0-1 | Premier League |
| 03 Oct 2021 | Tottenham Hotspur v Aston Villa | L | 2-1 | Premier League |
| 16 Oct 2021 | Aston Villa v Wolverhampton Wanderers | L | 2-3 | Premier League |
They have played three of the traditional big six clubs, winning one (away to Manchester United and losing two. Thus they are looking overall fairly modest opposition, which means we probably have more to worry about concerning the referee than we do with the team we are playing.
Before the season started the Guardian said of the club, “Aston Villa are a rising force; the only questions are how high can they go and how fast?” Their answer was to sell Jack Grealish for £105m and buy Emiliano Buendia, Leon Bailey and Danny Ings for a total of £89.84m, leaving them some spare change.
Here we can see how they did last season as a whole compared to this season so far.
| Team | Pos | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | Pts per game | Goals for per game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aston Villa this season | 13 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 12 | 12 | 0 | 10 | 1.25 | 0.92 |
| Aston Villa last season | 11 | 38 | 16 | 7 | 15 | 55 | 46 | 9 | 55 | 1.45 | 1.45 |
So it has been harder going this season without Grealish, as we might expect.
Indeed recent years have been difficult for Villa. They last won a trophy – the Intertoto Cup – in 2002, and their last domestic trophy was the league cup in 1996. But after three seasons of coming sixth in the Premier League up to 2010, they started dropping and in 2011/12 started a series of seasons finishing in the lower half of the league culminating in 2016 with relegation.
In 2019 they finished fifth in the Championship and gained promotion through the playoffs and have finished the last two seasons in 10th and 11th.
Historically we get the better of them, having won 83 games drawn 45 and lost 69. But after a sequence of seven consecutive wins from January 2014 to September 2019 in which we amassed 23 goals (or 3.29 per game if you prefer) we have had three consecutive losses in which we have not scored a single goal against them…
| Date | Match | Res | Score | Competition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Jan 2014 | Aston Villa v Arsenal | W | 1-2 | Premier League |
| 20 Sep 2014 | Aston Villa v Arsenal | W | 0-3 | Premier League |
| 1 Feb 2015 | Arsenal v Aston Villa | W | 5-0 | Premier League |
| 30 May 2015 | Arsenal v Aston Villa | W | 4-0 | FA Cup |
| 13 Dec 2015 | Aston Villa v Arsenal | W | 0-2 | Premier League |
| 15 May 2016 | Arsenal v Aston Villa | W | 4-0 | Premier League |
| 22 Sep 2019 | Arsenal v Aston Villa | W | 3-2 | Premier League |
| 21 Jul 2020 | Aston Villa v Arsenal | L | 1-0 | Premier League |
| 8 Nov 2020 | Arsenal v Aston Villa | L | 0-3 | Premier League |
| 6 Feb 2021 | Aston Villa v Arsenal | L | 1-0 | Premier League |
Obviously, this is a run that we cannot afford to continue.
The previews continue anon…
