Manchester United at Villa Park, eye on the prize and match facts from the BBC

I started to write a post the other day about the Chelsea match but I just couldn't end it. However, we shouldn't pretend like it didn't happen because we did get beaten at home, again.

The thing is, we also shouldn't pretend like we were beaten by a better side. Poch is still going to get sacked quite soon and we lost because we were a millisecond behind them to everything. I'm not sure what happened but we were not at the races and we made them look good.

And that has to change today. Anything but three points today will have people worried and we all know what Aston Villa fans become like when they are worried. It's not a pretty thing to watch. 

And the thing is, we've now dropped to fifth place behind Spurs. We're behind a team that don't have better players (okay, maybe one or two) and a manager that came from Scotland. Sure, I think he's still got the new manager bounce thing happening, but he isn't this good either.

So we need to win today to get us back into fourth place and to create a nice enough gap to the team in sixth. Winning today would give us an 11 point gap and I think come the end of the season, every singe point is going to matter. And we have to get back into winning ways at Villa Park.

That means treating this match with a little more importance than we did the Chelsea match the other day. It means going back to what we know and believe. And sure, teams have maybe figured us out, so lets just be better at it than them.

It only takes one goal to get the three points, but if we get more than that, we also don't take our eye off the prize. 

Match facts from the BBC

Head-to-head

• Manchester United are looking for a fourth consecutive victory over Aston Villa in all competitions, having come back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 in the most recent meeting on Boxing Day.
• Villa won this fixture 3-1 last season, ending a 23-game winless home run in the Premier League against United.
• Villa last earned consecutive home league victories against the Red Devils between 1966 and 1977, when they won five in a row.

Aston Villa

• Aston Villa have won nine of their 11 home league matches this season - only leaders Liverpool have a better record.
• They have a joint-high 30 home goals in this season's top flight, scoring in every match at Villa Park.
• However, after 20 wins and just one defeat at Villa Park in 22 games in all competitions, they have lost successive home fixtures for the first time in a year.
• Villa have scored 49 Premier League goals this campaign, only two short of their total last season.
• This will be Unai Emery's 100th Premier League game.
• Ollie Watkins, with 11 goals and 10 assists, is the first player to reach double figures for both in any of Europe's top five leagues this season.
• He's also the first Villa player to achieve this in a top-flight campaign since Dwight Yorke in 1995-96.

Manchester United

• Manchester United are looking for a fourth consecutive win in all competitions for the first time this season.
• They've scored 11 times in their run of three victories, having previously only managed 10 goals in as many games.
• The Red Devils have won four of their opening five matches in 2024 after ending last year with two wins in nine.
• Erik ten Hag's side have won just one of their last five away league fixtures (D1, L3).
• United are unbeaten in their last 24 Premier League matches in February (W15, D9), last losing a league match in this month in 2018.
• Rasmus Hojlund has now scored in five of United's last six games in all competitions.
• Bruno Fernandes has scored a goal on all three of his visits to Villa Park and has seven goals in total in this fixture home and away.