Match Preview: Aston Villa v Brighton
It’s amazing what one win against horrifically out-of-form opposition can do, isn’t? it Since Brighton beat Tottenham Hotspur two weeks ago, we’ve seen Albion fans predicting a seventh place finish come the end of the season, suggestions that Graham Potter will be the next England manager and talk of Aaron Connolly being a player worth in excess of £50m.
While all of that is very nice, now seems like as good a time as any to remind everyone that we’ve won four league games in 10 months. If we lose to Aston Villa and other results go against us, we could end this weekend in the relegation zone.
What Potter and the Albion need to do now is prove that the victory over Spurs was a genuine watershed moment that didn’t just happen because we had a good day when Mauricio Pochettino’s side were so abject.
Villa Park is as good a place as any to start.
A brief history of Aston Villa
Aston Villa are a funny old football club. They’ve had moments of great triumph, winning seven league titles, seven FA Cups, five League Cups and one European Cup. But they’ve also competed as far down the pyramid as the third tier and have just returned from a three-season spell in the Championship brought about through years of chronic mismanagement at boardroom level.
Much of their success came during the late 1800s, with Villa referring to themselves as “the most successful club of Queen Victoria’s reign.” This begs the question as to why more football teams don’t do this. Why aren’t Huddersfield or someone for example claiming to be the most successful club of George V’s reign?
Regardless of who the current monarch is, Villa have the potential to be one of the biggest football clubs in the country with their fan base, history and stadium. It’s never quite worked like that however and it’s hard to see them aspiring to anything other than top flight survival over the next few seasons.
Aston Villa this season
Villa took a surprisingly sensible approach to management recruitment a few months into last season and appointed local boy Dean Smith, who’d worked wonders at Walsall and then Brentford. Although not the most glamorous of appointments, they got a Villa fan and a man who knew the Championship inside out and he duly delivered promotion through the play-offs with victory over Frank Lampard’s Derby County back in May.
From the outside looking in, Villa’s plan for this season appears to have involved chucking as much money at possible on players and hoping it keeps them up. It’s Fulham-lite, effectively. It will only be at the end of the season when we know if this has gone much better than it did at Craven Cottage, but the early signs have been encouraging with Villa sitting on eight points in 15th spot, one point and one place below the Albion in the table.
Head-to-head
It’s a pretty ghastly head-to-head from an Albion point of view. There have been 23 meetings between Brighton and Villa with just four Albion wins. The most recent of those came in 1980, a 1-0 success at the Goldstone in December thanks to Michael Robinson netting the only goal of the game.
That remains our only top flight victory in eight attempts. We’ve won two clashes out of four in the third tier with the Albion’s fourth win coming in the Charity Shield of 1910 as we were crowned Unofficial Champions of England. Oh, and for some further encouraging news – none of those victories have ever taken place at Villa Park
Brighton’s head-to-head record with Aston Villa
Last six meetings
• Brighton 1-3 Aston Villa (League Cup Third Round, 25/09/19)
• Aston Villa 1-1 Brighton (Championship, 07/05/17)
• Brighton 1-1 Aston Villa (Championship, 18/11/16)
• Aston Villa 3-2 Brighton (FA Cup Fourth Round, 23/01/10)
• Brighton 0-0 Aston Villa (Division One, 26/03/83)
• Aston Villa 1-0 Brighton (Division One, 13/11/82)
That aforementioned last win against Villa came as long as nine meetings ago. If you’re looking for some straws to clutch, then we’re at least unbeaten in the league in our last three clashes, all of which have ended draws. One for the coupon, perhaps.
Team news
After having something of an injury crisis throughout September, the Albion’s squad is now getting back towards full strength with only Bernardo and Jose Izquierdo unavailable. Rather excitingly, that does mean that Leandro Trossard is available although Potter has said he only expects to use him from the bench. Davy Propper is also back while Shane Duffy came through 8,000 miles of travelling and 180 minutes against Georgia and Switzerland last week. He now appears to be de-facto fourth choice centre back however, so it’s hard to see where he fits in.
What will be interesting is what the Albion manager does formation wise. Spurs couldn’t deal with 4-2-2-2, the formation playing Pascal Gross and Aaron Mooy as two number 10s behind two strikers. It was brave and it worked. Can you get away with it away from home? Probably not against opponents playing with two out-and-out wingers as it affords a lot of space in wide areas, but Villa have mainly stuck to 4-3-3 this season. Still, it would be bold for Potter to stick with it on the road against opponents who will surely put up more of a fight than Spurs did, but if we’ve learnt one thing from his two months in charge so far it’s that he loves to do unusual things.
Aston Villa’s key players
Most people would probably highlight Jack Grealish here or the wonderfully named Wesley who leads Villa’s scoring charts with four goals. Forget them though, it’s Tom Heaton we’re worried about. Sometimes, we find ourselves waking up the in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when thinking about Heaton’s performance at the Amex for Burnley back in February.
It was one of the best individual displays of goalkeeping you’ll ever see. If the Albion are to pick up their first ever win at Villa Park, then they’ll have to find a way past him and given how we’ve struggled to take chances in every game bar Spurs and Watford, that could be a significant barrier to success.
A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Aston Villa away
We had a cracking night out on Birmingham’s Broad Street before the final game of the 2016-17 Championship season. That reaffirmed Birmingham’s place as one of the best cities in the country for pubs, even if it did end with an unwarranted casino visit.
A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Aston Villa away
That casino visit was the beginning of a sharp decline in that particular weekend actually. 12 hours later and we were inside Villa Park watching David Stockdale let the ball go straight through his legs in the 88th minute to cost us the Championship title.
Our favourite player to play for Brighton and Aston Villa
We’ve signed some right shit from Aston Villa on-loan over the last 10 years or so. Joe Bennett hardly set the world alight during the 2014-15 season, Gary Gardner couldn’t have looked less interested if he’d slipped into a coma and you’ve probably forgotten about Sam Williams, a striker so pointless that he doesn’t even come up on the first page of Google when you search for ‘Sam Williams Brighton’.
That leaves pretty slim pickings. Tommy Elphick was probably our favourite player from Dean Wilkins’ Class of 2006 and who knows how his Brighton career might have gone had he not got stretchered off in the final game of the 2010-11 season away at Notts County and never played for the club again.
He went onto captain Plucky Little Bournemouth from League One to the Premier League and was at Villa for their three seasons in the Championship, although he only managed 41 appearances in that time. He can now be found at Huddersfield Town.
What we like about Aston Villa
Prince William is a supporter for a start. Birmingham is also an excellent city although disappointingly this game comes before the Christmas Market is on, meaning there is no chance to fuel up on Bratwurst and 10 pints of Paulaner beforehand.
Prediction
It won’t be a case of back down to Earth with a bang, but it’s hard to see the Albion scaling the heights of Spurs at home again – especially as we’ve failed to score in three of our four Premier League away games to date. A 1-1 draw.
