Key events
Looks like a pretty dismal day in Birmingham. Let’s hope we get some sunshine football, or something.
The teams!
The team sheets have been handed in, and here is the news. Ollie Watkins starts again, with Duran on the bench for Villa, with Leon Bailey and Lucas Digne the new faces from the team that drew with Arsenal. West Ham bring in Alphonse Areola in goal, and Vladimir Coufal and Carlos Soler out of goal.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Mings, Digne, Tielemans, Kamara, Bailey, Rogers, Ramsey, Watkins. Subs: Olsen, Zych, McGinn, Duran, Buendia, Garcia, Malen, Maatsen, Bogarde.
West Ham: Areola, Coufal, Kilman, Cresswell, Wan-Bissaka, Alvarez, Soler, Emerson Palmieri, Lucas Paqueta, Soucek, Kudus. Subs: Fabianski, Foderingham, Luis Guilherme, Ings, Rodriguez, Irving, Casey, Scarles, Orford.
Referee: Peter Bankes.
Hello world!
“Of course, West Ham, they are not being consistent, but they have now a new coach. Tactically, they are going to improve,” said Unai Emery on Friday. We’re about to find out how much improvement they’ve managed, but Villa have some improving to do: sure, they’re eighth in the table which is fine “(“The most important for us is the Premier League, and to be in the table’s top eight positions,” Emery added), and have lost only one of their last five league games, but away from home they’re not so hot: two wins and five defeats in their last eight in the league, which would put them 16th in a notional last-eight-away-from-home table (in mitigation, those fixtures included visits to Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, Chelsea and Liverpool). Emery said their ambition was to “try to be consistent like we are at the moment at home”, where they would be sixth and unbeaten in a last-eight-games table.
Graham Potter also thinks West Ham are going to improve. “Our ambition is there – we want to get better. We want to move towards a style of play that our supporters recognise and are fond of,” he said at his press conference on Friday. “It has been nice to have a decent stretch of training. We have managed to do some good work, analyse the last game and prepare for Aston Villa, so I think we have used the time well. In every training session and after every message, I think the intention has been there.”
This will be an ideal test of their improvement since Potter’s arrival, and what he’s managed to achieve with that decent stretch of training: these teams played here in the FA Cup a couple of weeks ago, a day after he was unveiled as Julen Lopategui’s replacement, and Villa won 2-1.
Since then West Ham have beaten Fulham 3-2 (in a game where they had four shots overall and only three on target) and lost 2-0 to Crystal Palace (in a game where they had four shots overall and none at all on target). For context, last season the average Premier League game featured 27.2 shots in total. Since Christmas West Ham have had a total of 11 shots on target across six games, while conceding 15 goals at the other end. It’s obvious where that improvement needs to be demonstrated. So, let’s see how they’ve got on, shall we?
