Cardiff City vs. Aston Villa, lineups and open match thread

Aston Villa head to Cardiff City stadium to take on...Cardiff City, which makes a lot of sense. It would be weird if they were going to Cardiff City Stadium to play, like, Shamrock Rovers or something. Calling games "must win" is typically a pretty annoying cliche, but a win for Villa would indeed be a very nice thing, because Villa could fall to as low as 17th in the table with a loss (or a draw, though that's significantly less plausible.

Paul Lambert has opted to go with an honest-to-god 4-4-2, and though that's not a formation that's on the cutting edge of tactical thought, it's probably a hell of a lot more watchable than a diamond 5-3-1 or whatever you want to call that narrow, midfield-clogging thing we've seen so often this season. Villa's clearly no great shakes, but Cardiff are just an awful team; this is really a game where anything less than three points is going to be incredibly annoying.

Cardiff City XI:

David Marshall; Kévin Théophile-Catherine, Steven Caulker, Ben Turner, Declan John; Wilfried Zaha, Jordan Mutch, Gary Medel, Craig Noone; Frazier Campbell, Kenwyne Jones

Cardiff subs:

Joe Lewis, Magnus Wolff Eikrem, Don Cowie, Cala, Mats Møller Dæhli, Jo Inge Berget, Fábio

Aston Villa XI:

Brad Guzan; Leandro Bacuna, Ron Vlaar, Nathan Baker, Joe Bennett; Marc Albrighton, Ashley Westwood, Fabian Delph,  Ryan Bertrand; Christian Benteke, Gabby Agbonlahor

Aston Villa subs:

Jed Steer, Karim El Ahmadi, Yacouba Sylla, Nicklas Helenius, Grant Holt, Ciaran Clark, Andi Weimann