Match Preview: Swansea City v Aston Villa

Who are we playing?
Swansea City

Where are we playing?
The small but beautifully formed Liberty Stadium, Swansea, 3pm Saturday.

Easy to get to?
Get off the M4 at Junction 45 and get on the A4067 South and you can't miss it. Good luck with parking though. It's a bit of a hike from the train station, but there's buses and taxis if you don't fancy the stroll. If your coach takes you straight there, you should be able to get a beer in the ground.

Can I go?
A combination of a reciprocal cheap ticket deal between the two clubs and the strength of our away following has ensured that we've sold out of our allocation, so if you've not got one, you can't go.

Can I watch it live on the telly?
Not legally in the UK no, however there are plenty of pubs with dodgy dishes and dubious web streams if you've not got a ticket but are desperate to watch as it happens.

Big game?
MASSIVE.

Swansea took a massive stride to safety by winning at Newcastle United, a feat a lot of struggling teams have managed. Sadly we didn't.

Villa's worrying lack of goal threat is not only making the fanbase miserable, it's also giving hope to the clubs below us that we can be overhauled. In this hugely unpredictable Premier League season, we simply can't rely on other teams failing, we MUST get some points of our own on the board.

Mind you, if Paul Lambert actually believes that our second half performance was "excellent", we really are fucked. He couldn't question the players' effort apparently. A large chunk of us do question it.

That duvet needs ironing

Shay and Sid haven't got a magic wand. If we can't play pretty then we have to grind out results. There are far too many players going through the motions at the moment.

"Not fit to wear the shirt" may be harsh but can you honestly remember a worse Villa team in your lifetime?

Do Swansea have any famous fans?
Struggling with this one a bit, but there is Darling Bud Catherine Zeta Jones, who is most famous for being Michael Douglas's carer wife.

Not a Swansea fan 

We've got Ritchie Neville from the boyband Five.

So we win.
Yes this is exactly the same as our famous fan section from the home game but cut us some slack. Swansea seem to be unloved by the glitterati.

Someone who definitely can't be counted as a celeb Swansea fan is ex-Coronation Street starlet Helen Flanagan. Airbrained Helen incurred the wrath of an entire nation when she tweeted “Started to get bored now, been in Wales too long, Lol. Must take action.” while boyfriend Scott Sinclair was stationed at the club

Who's playing for us?
Gabby and Andi Weimann looked woefully out of form against Southampton but will Lambert have the courage to drop two of his three favourite strikers when the other one is out injured? With Nicklas Helenius still doing a passable impression of the Invisible Man, it would seem that creaky old Grant Holt and enthusiastic young puppy Callum Robinson are the only options. Leandro Bacuna again proved that he is not a right back so we'd hope he'd be pushed into midfield to replace the mediocre El Ahmadi and Matt Lowton brought back but then we've been hoping for that for most of the season. We can only assume that our dour Scottish leader has got confused by his only real right back's squad number and assumed he was in the bomb squad. Albrighton was our only avenue of creativity last week so he'll probably drop him. Joe Bennett is a doubt for the match with a dodgy ankle but he probably wouldn't have started anyway.

Who's playing for them?
Angel Rangel has suddenly gone all Rory Delap with long throws. Daddy Cool Wilfried Bony is gonna terrify our back line.

Any useless stats?
Of course, here you go:

• Villa have only played twice before at the Liberty Stadium and have yet to win. Having said that we've yet to lose either

• We haven't won at Swansea since a 2-1 victory at the Vetch Field at Christmas 1971.  Villa legends Ray Graydon and Charlie Aitken got the goals.

• We have 15 wins over Swansea while they've beaten us 4 times and there have been 3 draws

• Our biggest win over the then Swansea Town was on Boxing Day 1936. Ronnie Dix got a hat trick as we thrashed the Swans 4-0.

He said, She said...
“It won’t be easy for us. No game is easy, especially at this time of the season. Like us, Aston Villa are scrapping to secure their safety. They are a young side and are very energetic. We are expecting a really tough game, and we can’t take anything for granted. If we go into these next three games and don’t get any other points while other teams win, we could be relegated. It’s far from over for us. We have to go into Saturday’s game to fight for three points. We have to make sure we are mathematically safe.” Garry Monk

"I’m totally relaxed about everything. I’m not uptight about anything. We’ve got to try and win football matches, which was always the case." Paul Lambert

Prediction
We just looked so not up for it against the Saints that it's hard to see things perking up dramatically in a week. The Welsh outfit will be on a high after Newcastle and in a game which we genuinely thought was our best chance of a win on the run-in, we're now predicting a Swansea victory.