Match Preview: Aston Villa v Norwich City

by Dek Hogan 

Who are we playing?
Norwich City on Saturday 6th February at 3pm.

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

Can I go?
Yep. Plenty of tickets left. Tons. Or check with your disillusioned season ticket holding pals. You may well cop a freebie.

Easy to get to?
Dead easy. We recommend ditching the car, getting public transport in and getting slaughtered. Takes some of the pain away.

Can I watch it on telly?
Saturday 3 o'clocker so pubs with dodgy dishes and dubious web sites only.

Big game?
Yes if you think we've got a cat in hell's chance of escape. No if you live in the real world.

It's certainly huge for Norwich City, who, unlike us, are actually fighting for their lives but finding it a real struggle.

Any team now regards anything other than a win over Villa as something akin to disaster, so poor are we. That's understandable given our beyond pitiful return of just two wins in 24 league games and all the more so now we're so light on strikers that Gabby Agbonlahor is in from the cold.

Gabby's best days are clearly behind him and his dwindling pace, coupled with the team's general lack of creativity means we are going to struggle even against a Norwich side low on confidence.

Rémi Garde, seething already after his board failed to provide ANYTHING in the window, can not have been happy at Jordan Ayew's completely inexplicable elbow at Cresswell, which further limits his options.

Ayew's subsequent apology seemed sincere enough but we'd be mugs not to suspect that he and some of other summer arrivals aren't plotting with their agents to escape the farce that is currently Aston Villa Football Club.

For me, the lowest point of Tuesday wasn't Ayew's elbow but the sustained hatred filled song directed at Randy Lerner on the concourse during the half time interval. The song is one that used to be sung by Liverpool fans about Margaret Thatcher and by United fans about Malcolm Glazer. A section of Villa's away support (a very large section, it has to be said) adapted and adopted it with true venom.

Not our finest hour. The song eventually was heard towards the end of the second half too, which was a pity because we'd been vocal and supportive in the main body of the stadium throughout, with some great banter with the West Ham boys.

Completely understand the anger towards Lerner, and we've been offensive about the bloke, highly offensive it has to be admitted, on our Twitter feed especially, but that song crossed the line.

It is indicative of how bad things are that people, hundreds of people, felt that strongly, but songs as brutal as that will be divide the fan base at a time when we really need to pull together.

Typical Norwich fan

Do Norwich have any famous fans? 
Ed Balls.

There's also Delia "let's be 'avin' you" Smith and Stephen " lost his job to Sandi Toksvig" Fry

We've got the geezer that writes the Jack Reacher books.

So we win

Who's playing for us?

He's not got many options, so we'd expect a similar line up to Tuesday. Ayew's stupidity may well give Scott Sinclair a chance to show us what he's got.

Who's playing for them?
Tough to judge. Alex Neil made wholesale changes for the Spurs game and they still got thumped. Will he keep faith with newbies like Timm Klose? We'll  have to wait and see

Any useless stats?

Jackie Maund

Of course, here you go:

• We have 29 wins over Norwich City while they have 18 victories over us. There have been 16 draws.

• Norwich haven't won at Villa Park since 1992. Ray Houghton and Deano Saunders scored our goals after we'd gone two down, but Daryl Sutch nabbed the winner as the Canaries secured a 3-2 victory.

• Our first ever meeting was in 1936. We triumphed 3-0 thanks to goals from Ronnie Dix, Frank Broome and Jackie Maund

Prediction
Going for a 2-0 Norwich win.