Match Preview: Villa v Stoke City

Who are we playing?
Stoke City on Saturday 21st February at 3pm

Where are we playing?
Villa Park


Can I go?
Tickets remain available but with a new manager in the hot seat, get in quick if you want your favourite spot.

Easy to get to?
Yep, but if you are going through town, be aware that they buggering up all the roads near Paradise Circle/Broad Street as they (painfully slowly) knock down the old library.

Can I watch it on telly?
Saturday 3 o'clocker, so not officially available on UK telly, though there are plenty of web streams and loads of pubs will screen the game live, but they can't hear you cheer on the new bloke (Come on Tim!) unless you're there

Big game?
Huge.

Stoke are still smarting from their humiliating exit from the FA Cup. Add to that their desire to be kings of the Midlands and there will be no way they'll be happy to lie down and let us do the double over them.

Hard to see Tim Sherwood being able to solve all of Villa's on field issues in a week but anything other than three points and his honeymoon period will be cut drastically short.

There was the odd glimmer of light against Leicester but there is still a massive amount to put right and some big time Charlies in our team need a rocket put under them. Tim proved at Spurs that he won't be scared to bruise egos and that big reputations count for nothing if you aren't doing it on the pitch.

Is Tim the right bloke for the job in the current circumstances? We thought Tom Fox needed to appoint a wartime consigliere (yes, I have been watching The Godfather) to get us out of the sweet and sticky. We've just got to hope that Mister Sherwood has it in him to pull the squad together rather than leave it fractured and divided.

Typical Stoke fan? A-ha!

Do Stoke City have any famous fans? 
Almost certainly not. There's Mick Hancock but is he still famous? Seems to have vanished without trace.

We've been Hunting High and Low for any others and the best we could come is Scandinavian pop combo A-ha. Watching Stoke's FA Cup exploits must have scared The Living Daylights out of them.

Mrs. Crouch

However, we've got fiddle playing scruffbox Nigel Kennedy.

So we win.

Who's playing for us?
Benteke and Vlaar returned for the Leicester game but with a new geezer at the helm, anyone might be in with a shout, so virtually everyone must be hoping for a slot and trying to avoid the crunching tackles of Mister Clark in training...

Who's playing for them?
Scared of Peter Crouch? We are. Knows where the goal is.


Any useless stats?
Of course, here you go:

• Stoke City have beaten us 31 times while we have 51 wins. There have been 30 draws.

• Our last win over Stoke at Villa Park was way back in December 2009. John Carew, who is bigger than me and you, got the solitary goal.

• Our first ever meeting with Stoke was in 1888. We won 5-1.

• Stoke hammered us 4-1 in this fixture last year after Big Chris had given us an early lead.

Prediction
Going for a 2-1 Villa win.