Villa Park plays host to a huge Premier League clash on Sunday between two Champions League hopefuls. We look ahead to the game with our Aston Villa vs Tottenham prediction and preview.
Aston Villa vs Tottenham Stats: Quick Hits
- The Opta supercomputer predicts an evenly-matched encounter, with Aston Villa winning 38.5% of pre-match simulations and Tottenham triumphing in 33.4%.
- Villa have won their last three Premier League meetings with Tottenham.
- Only Mohamed Salah and Harry Kane have more Premier League goal contributions than Spurs’ Son Heung-Min since the start of the 2020-21 campaign.
Match Preview
UEFA Champions League football is the pinnacle for most European clubs and Sunday’s early kick-off between Aston Villa and Tottenham at Villa Park could significantly influence both teams’ qualification hopes.
Villa survived a testing assignment away at Ajax on Thursday as they drew 0-0 in the first leg of the Europa Conference League last 16 in Amsterdam.
Unai Emery’s side are fourth in the league table and five points clear of Tottenham heading into Matchday 28, though Spurs do at least have a game in hand. Villa were 3-2 winners over Luton Town last Saturday, snatching victory through Lucas Digne’s 89th-minute header after Tahith Chong and Carlton Morris had earlier cancelled out in-form Ollie Watkins’ first-half brace at Kenilworth Road.
Watkins has scored 16 Premier League goals this season, his most in a single campaign. Indeed, only two players have scored more in a season in the competition for Villa: Christian Benteke (19 in 2012-13) and Dwight Yorke (17 in both 1995-96 and 1996-97).
That free-scoring form from Watkins has helped Villa net 59 goals in the competition this term, already their most in a season at this level since 2007-08 under Martin O’Neill (71). It’s also their most at this stage of a top-flight campaign in 91 years (68 in 1932-33).
Leon Bailey set up Watkins’ opener against Luton, too, with the pair combining for seven Premier League goals this term, more than any other duo in the competition.
Douglas Luiz has also been among the goals this season, though those have exclusively come at Villa Park. His nine on home territory is only behind Georginio Wijnaldum (11 in 2015-16) and Les Ferdinand (10 in 2000-01) for the most scored in a single campaign with 100% coming at home. In his career, 16 of the Brazilian’s 20 Premier League goals have been scored at Villa’s home ground (80%), the highest ratio at a single stadium of any player with 20+ goals in the competition’s history.
As for Emery’s team news, there’s been very little change over the past week: Diego Carlos, Jhon Durán, Tyrone Mings, Emiliano Buendía and Boubacar Kamara are the long-term absentees from Villa’s squad. Ezri Konsa, who saw red in Europe on Thursday, returned from a knee problem last week. No new names were added to injury list during Thursday’s draw against Ajax in the Europa Conference League.
The gap between Spurs and Villa would have been greater if not for a late salvaging act on MD 27, when Timo Werner levelled in the 79th minute before Cristian Romero and Son Heung-Min secured a 3-1 victory over Crystal Palace, leaving Eberechi Eze’s 59th-minute free-kick opener as a distant memory at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Werner’s equaliser was his maiden league goal for Spurs and his first in the competition since April 2022 for Chelsea against Arsenal as the German attacker became the fourth player to score for both the Blues and Tottenham in the Premier League after Eidur Gudjohnsen, William Gallas and Gustavo Poyet.
Son has been involved in 19 goals in his last 20 Premier League appearances (13 goals, six assists), too. Stretching further back to the start of the 2020-21 campaign, only Mohamed Salah (118) and Harry Kane (96) – now in the Bundesliga, of course – have more goals involvements in England’s top flight than Son (63 goals, 29 assists).
The South Korea forward also has five goals in three appearances at Villa Park, averaging one every 52 minutes. Among players to play 250+ minutes at a Premier League stadium, only former Liverpool forward Luis Suárez at Norwich City’s Carrow Road (one every 38 minutes) has a better minutes-per-goal return.
Those attacking numbers all signal the attacking quality Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou has to call upon, despite the absence of ever-improving forward Richarlison due to a knee injury that will likely prevent him featuring again at the weekend. Manor Solomon and Pedro Porro could be back for the Villa trip, though, with goalkeeper Fraser Forster and Ryan Sessegnon Spurs’ only other longer-term absentees.
Aston Villa vs Tottenham Head-to-Head
Villa will fancy their chances here considering they have won their last three Premier League meetings with Tottenham, their longest league winning run over Spurs since January 1996 (a run of four).
Emery’s side were 2-1 victors at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London in the reverse fixture earlier this term, with Pau Torres and Watkins the scorers as they cancelled out Giovani Lo Celso’s opener.
Spurs also lost this exact fixture 2-1 last campaign after goals for Watkins and Jacob Ramsey before the now-departed Kane managed a 90th-minute penalty.
That defeat ended a run of 11 unbeaten Premier League visits to Villa Park from March 2009 to April 2022 (W9 D2), though Tottenham have not suffered back-to-back league defeats in away games against Villa since November 2004.
Recent Form
Villa have won four of their last five Premier League matches, including the last three in a row against Luton, Nottingham Forest and Fulham. That streak marks the hosts’ fourth run of 3+ consecutive wins under Emery, something only two managers had managed for Villa since the departure of O’Neill in 2010 and before Emery’s appointment (Dean Smith in 2020 and Steven Gerrard in 2022).
By contrast, Tottenham have only won one of their last six away Premier League games (D3 L2) despite scoring two or more goals in five of those games. Spurs last scored 2+ goals in six successive away league games between May and September 2017.
That fearless attacking form has helped Spurs score in all 26 Premier League matches under Postecoglou, the best such run from a manager’s first game in the English top-flight since Arthur Rowe at Tottenham in the 1950-51 season, when they won the title (scored in first 27 games).
Villa have also conceded nine goals in their last four league games at Villa Park (W2 L2), more than they had in their previous 16 on home soil (eight). Emery’s men have shipped 2+ goals in each of their last four but gone on to win two of them (3-2 vs Burnley, 4-2 vs Nottingham Forest); between 2019-20 and 2022-23, Villa only won one of 31 games when shipping 2+ goals at home (D4 L26).
It’s fair to say, a clean sheet for either side doesn’t look especially likely.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Aston Villa vs Tottenham Prediction
The Opta supercomputer struggled to split these two sides in 10,000 pre-match simulations, with Villa winning 38.5% and Tottenham triumphing in 33.4%.
A draw would keep Villa five points clear of Spurs, with that result forecast in 28.1% of data-led simulations, and that would damage Tottenham’s top-four push.
Villa are still the favourites to secure that heavily desired fourth-place spot and guaranteed qualification for the Champions League in 61.8% of Opta’s end-of-season simulations, while Spurs’ chances for the same position are rated at 31.1% – fifth in the league table could still be enough for UEFA’s top club tournament, though Manchester United may still make a late surge for that spot as well.
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