West Ham tomorrow, the World Cup and match facts from the BBC

I've seen Aston Villa win silverware and I've seen us lose finals. I've seen us compete at the top of the league and I've seen us relegated. But right now, in this very moment, I don't recall such a good run and overall positive feeling. 

That doesn't mean West Ham tomorrow is in the bag. I'm probably more nervous because we're on such a good run, but that's what the difference is. It's that the players and manager are taking this in their stride and managing each match as it comes and doing the business.

Nothing has really changed for me, but how the team are approaching and getting things done looks better than it has for a long time. And we have to accept that is down to the manager and the players as a group.

And I don't think anyone doubted the manager. I certainly didn't.

But I'm seeing reports and hearing conversations that some were questioning the manager earlier this season and some even suggesting he would be replaced. I don't recall seeing any of that. Have I missed something and why are people writing this now?

It doesn't matter and I don't think it will bother the manager that much, because he's been in the game long enough to know that people need to write something and in the UK, if they've nothing to write, they'll make it up. But enough about that, it's West Ham on Sunday and it's a massive game and three points would be huge for us.

And even though we are nearly half way through December and we have three games to go after tomorrow, we do have time to rest and it's not a match every three or four days. Win tomorrow and we're in a very good place, even though it's United, Chelsea and Arsenal coming up in the final three matches of the year.

The game is broken

I can't not write about the World Cup and maybe this should be on Footballocracy or maybe I just delete that experiment. Actually now that I write it, I know I'm not going to, I will write something there, but the ticket prices for World Cup just goes to show that the people running the game have forgotten what the game is all about.

Don't get me wrong, I'll watch, but this is just pushing it a little further away for me. It's all getting pushed just a little further away. Something has to change. But as long as the money is there, they will do what they want to get a little bit of it.

It's almost as if, if they're not exploiting their position they think they're doing it wrong. And that it wrong, just like FIFA were wrong 15 or so years ago when they threatened legal action against me with made up allegations. It's like they think they can just do whatever they want and because they get away with most things, it becomes a habit.

But the game is broken and it's never going to get fixed. Not in this form. But this isn't about FIFA, it's about us because we keep buying the tickets, so we only have ourselves to blame.  

Match facts from the BBC

• West Ham are winless in their last five Premier League games against Aston Villa (D3 L2), having won five in a row against them before that.

• Having been winless in nine consecutive away league games against West Ham between August 2012 and March 2024, Aston Villa won this exact fixture 2-1 last season. They last won consecutive visits to the Hammers in December 1996.

• West Ham have just 13 points in 15 Premier League games this season (W3 D4 L8), their worst start since 2017-18 when they had 10 points. However, in their last three campaigns when they’ve had 13 or fewer points at this stage, they’ve avoided relegation – 13 in 2013-14 (came 13th), 13 in 2016-17 (11th) and 10 in 2017-18 (13th).

• Aston Villa have won nine of their last 10 Premier League matches (L1), winning the most points in the division in that timeframe from 28 September onwards (27). They are the first team in any of the top four divisions in the history of the Football League to win none of their first five games of a season and then win as many as nine of their next 10.

• Only Leeds and Newcastle (6 each) have conceded more 90th minute goals in the Premier League this season than West Ham (5), while the Hammers have faced both the most shots (30) and most shots on target (14) in the 90th minute of matches in 2025-26.

• Aston Villa were the only side not to score in any of their first four Premier League games this season, but since MD5 only Man City (27) have scored more goals than Villa (22), with the Villans enjoying the third-best conversion rate in that time (15.9%), behind Spurs (17%) and Man City (16.3%).

• West Ham manager Nuno Espírito Santo has gone 21 consecutive Premier League matches without seeing his side keeping a clean sheet (11 with Nottingham Forest, 10 with the Hammers). He’s the first manager in Premier League history to fail to keep a clean sheet in any of his final 10 games at a club and then any of his first 10 games in his next spell at another club.

• Under Unai Emery, Aston Villa have won the fourth-most points in the Premier League (213), winning 63 of their 116 games under the Spaniard (D24 L29). In the timeframe of the previous 116 Villa matches before his first game (November 2019 – October 2022), Villa won the joint fewest points of any ever-present side in that time (136).

• Jarrod Bowen has 99 goals and assists combined in the Premier League for West Ham (60 goals, 39 assists) and could be the second player to get to treble figures for the Hammers, after Michail Antonio (68 goals, 33 assists).

• Ollie Watkins could make his 200th Premier League appearance in this match – the Aston Villa frontman has 78 goals and 34 assists in 199 games so far, with only 11 English players involved in more goals in their first 200 games, most recently Jamie Vardy (97 goals, 28 assists).