Recapping Aston Villa's defeat against Man United and looking to Stoke

Some sort of short intro here

Just The Facts, Please

Form (Last 5, most recent first): L L W D D

Results Last Week: Aston Villa 0-3 Manchester United (EPL)

Upcoming Fixtures:

• First Team:
  at Stoke City (EPL) - Saturday, December 2, 1500 GMT, 1000 Eastern

Tracking Villa's Progress

A look at how Aston Villa are doing compared to corresponding fixtures from last season. For a more full explanation of the corresponding fixtures table, see here.

Well, the loss to Manchester United at Villa Park was the same result as last year, but the deficit was larger. Goodbye goals-scored surplus. Goodbye!

Injuries

New Injuries Last Week:

• Chris Herd - some sort of facial injury

Match Notes

Aston Villa 0-3 Manchester United
Danny Welbeck (15', 18'), Tom Cleverley (52’)

• What a miserable match. The first 15 minutes were actually thrilling, and saw Villa attacking every chance they got, taking shots, and generally pestering the heck out of United. And then Danny Welbeck managed to get to the rebound off of a header that dinged off the post. It was an absolutely perfect goal, and it's just the sort of thing Villa have been giving up in scads lately.
• Of course it didn't help when Welbeck added another 3 minutes later. It was the third time in the last five minutes that Aston Villa have allowed two goals within ten minutes of each other. All three of those instances have been the first two goals of the match, and have happened in the first half. Aston Villa are getting into a habit of digging themselves into a hole. Yes, they scraped back against West Brom to pick up the point, but given how few goals this team has scored (16 in 16 matches!) 2-goal deficits are going to be fatal more often than not.
• And if you'd like to talk about other annoying trends, how about this one: Aston Villa now have 33 yellow cards on the season. Yesterday's spate of three included Gabby Agbonlahor's fifth, so he'll be missing Saturday's match against Stoke for disciplinary suspension just as Fabian Delph missed today's match. This team is frustrating everywhere right now, and it's really tough to see the upside.
• Nevertheless, let me try to find one bright spot for us: Marc Albrighton got the start and was the best player on the pitch for Villa all day. He was creative, took chances, and generally looked like the SuperMarc that had us all so excited when he began making waves under Gerrard Houllier. So yeah, today sucked, but there was Marc.
• In lieu of a standard recap, I decided to put my thoughts into the form of a poem, which you can read here.
• The WhoScored recap is here.

Looking Ahead

• This is normally the space where I talk a little bit about what to expect from the upcoming match and whether or not Villa have a chance. I can do the former, but as for the latter: who in the world knows. In Villa's favor: it's on the road. Against Villa: it's against a team lower than they are. In their favor: Only once in this season have Villa gone three matches without a point. Against Villa: smalllllllll sample sizes on that last stat.
• So let's leave this as my prediction: On Saturday, a football match will be played. It's likely to be boring, but it may not be. The teams will come away with some combination of points after goals are or are not scored.
• Now watch, because I made that prediction, Saturday's match will be snowed out.
• Stoke, though, are a pretty mediocre team in much the same mold as Aston Villa. 18 points and a goal differential of -5 as opposed to Villa's 19 and -6.
• That said, Stoke will be coming in on short rest, as they're still alive in the Capital One Cup quarter-finals. For that match on Wednesday, they host Manchester United. Hopefully it goes to penalty shots and all players will sustain minor injuries that take 5 days to recover from.
• It's worth noting that Stoke may actually go all-out in the Cup match. They've won the League Cup once, back in 1972, and that is still the club's only major honor. A lot of teams look down on the League Cup, but teams like Stoke and (let's all admit it) Aston Villa would absolutely love the lesser of the two domestic cup trophies.

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