Match Preview: Aston Villa v Notts County

by Dek Hogan 

Who are we playing?
Notts County on Tuesday 25th August 2015.

The rest of the West Midlands are also playing at home on the same night. Plod are happy for this to happen but shunted our first home of the season to a Friday to accommodate 150 people protesting at Walsall.

Go figure.

Where are we playing?
Villa Park, you know where it is.

Can I go?
Yep, LOADS of tickets still on sale (at time of writing). If you can't be arsed to turn up, don't you dare whinge if you are struggling for Wembley tickets for the final.


Easy to get to?
Doddle. Assuming you are on the right shift or aren't on holiday with your anklebiters.

Can I watch it on telly?
Possibly not. Sky are showing Luton v Stoke and if the game isn't one of the few covered live by foreign broadcasters, you won't get a stream.

Big game?
Huge.

We crashed out at this stage last year

We are not gonna win the league are we? So if there is any chance of bringing silverware back to Villa Park in the current climate, we have to take the cups seriously. No two ways about it.

The trouble is, at this stage of the competition, none of the teams competing take these games seriously, with even teams far lower down the pecking order making multiple changes to the line-ups they'd put out in the league.

As a consequence, the cups are becoming de-valued and even budget priced ticketing fails to bring in decent sized attendances for these games.

That doesn't mean these games will any sort of walkover. Leyton Orient made more changes to their line-up in last season's clash than we did but still managed to see us off.

From a fan perspective, as well as wanting to have been at every game on the journey to Wembley, games like this afford an opportunity to see those squad players that haven't had a run out as yet and a chance to ease back players who've been missing through lack of fitness.

Do Notts County have any famous fans?

Typical County Fan

Well there's Bob Dylan impressionist Jake Bugg and This Is England/Broadchurch/Line of Duty actress Vicky McClure, which is pretty cool.

There's also Harold Shipman.

Not so cool.

We've got fiddle playing scruffbox Nigel Kennedy off of Radio 3.

So we win.

Carlos

Who's playing for us?
If Timbo rotates as expected, then we may see run outs for the likes of Alan Hutton, Nathan Baker and possibly Libor Kozak, though he didn't make the bench Saturday.

We'd also expect some sort of involvement from Carles Gil and despite breaking back into the first choice XI, Jack Grealish would obviously love to be involved after a successful loan spell at County.

Could boost the gate if they announce in advance that Adama is getting a run out.

Who's playing for them?

Really dunno but we'd expect them to make changes from their bog-standard league line-up. Everyone else is.

Any useless stats?
Of course, here you go:

• Notts County have beaten us 21 times while we have 42 wins. There have been 20 draws.

• Our last competitive encounter with County was an FA Cup 3rd Round replay in January 1997. We won 3-0 thanks to a brace from Dwight Yorke and one from Ugo Ehiogu .

• Villa's only previous encounter with Notts County in this tournament, then known as The Milk Cup, was in 1982. Shockingly, the European Champions went down 2-1 at home, with Peter Withe getting our goal. John Chiedozie and 17 year old sub David Clarke scored for them. County ran out 1-0 winners in the second leg to send us spiralling out of the competition.

• Our first ever league meeting was in September 1888. We hammered the oldest team in the league 9-1. Dennis Hodgetts got one, Archie Hunter and Tommy Green got two each and Albert Aleen scored a hat-trick.

Villa hammered County 6-0 at their place, January 1982

Prediction
Going for an all action 4-1 Villa win.