Aston Villa face Brighton at the Amex Stadium on Saturday with Steven Gerrard’s men hoping to get back on track with a win.
Villa have been hugely disappointing in our previous two games, losing both and failing to score in either as we suffered defeat to both Newcastle Utd and Watford.
READ MORE: Five key talking points as woeful Villa deliver another poor display vs Watford
In turn, as the pressure and concern builds, Gerrard will be eager to see his players produce a positive response this weekend, but it won’t be easy against a Brighton side looking to climb up from mid-table in the Premier League too.
🗣 Gerrard ahead of Brighton game…#avfc | #UTV | #BHAAVL pic.twitter.com/j2YJmmGIUW
— Talk Villa (@thetalkvilla) February 25, 2022
Team news
Villa will be boosted by the return of Ezri Konsa after he served a two-game suspension, while long-term absentees Bertrand Traore and Marvelous Nakamba remain sidelined.
As for Brighton, Adam Webster and Enock Mwepu are set to miss out with groin and hamstring injuries respectively. Lewis Dunk is expected to return though after missing the defeat to Burnley due to suspension.
Match stats
Head-to-head
- Brighton’s only victory in the past 13 competitive meetings was by 2-1 in the Premier League at Villa Park in November 2020 (D5, L7).
- Albion’s most recent home win against Aston Villa came in the top flight at the Goldstone Ground in December 1980.
- This season’s reverse Premier League fixture was won 2-0 by Aston Villa in Steven Gerrard’s first match as their head coach. Villa can do the league double over Brighton for the first time since 1981-82.
- Steven Gerrard’s side have only won once in eight competitive fixtures since Christmas, taking five points from seven league games during that period.
- Excluding the three promoted clubs, Aston Villa’s tally of 13 Premier League defeats this season is a joint-high alongside Everton.
- Villa have lost eight of their 12 top-flight away games in 2021-22, already one more defeat than in the whole of last season.
- They have only drawn one of their 19 away league matches since a goalless stalemate at Amex Stadium a year ago.
Prediction
Despite Gerrard’s positive outlook in his press conference on Friday in terms of the mood within the Villa squad in training this week, Villa are low on confidence and have key issues to fix based on what we’ve seen in the last few games.
Ultimately, we need to get back to basics and become better organised and disciplined defensively to ensure we’re in the game heading into the latter stages, and importantly, we need our attacking and creative players to find their form again to provide a clinical edge to our play in the final third.
It’s asking a lot to ensure all these crucial aspects click back into place in this game as Brighton have quality in their side to make this very difficult for us, but it’s hoped that especially on the road where we can be more of a threat on the counter attack to exploit spaces in behind, we’ll have enough to get the right result. Provided Gerrard does make the right changes, specifically with Morgan Sanson and Ollie Watkins coming back into the XI, this could be a bounce-back game for us. Brighton 0-2 Villa.