40 min: A proper lull this time. Nothing’s going on.
38 min: A long ball down the Arsenal left. Pepe battles under it with Cash. The Villa defender just about manages to hold off the in-form Arsenal winger, and Martinez races off his line to claim. A decent tussle.
37 min: Something of a lull, albeit one during which both teams ping it around in a pleasant manner.
35 min: Play continues awhile, but when the ball finally goes out of play, Nakamba becomes the second Villa player to go into the book.
34 min: Nakamba crunches into Saka, who is beginning to feel that this is personal.
33 min: Nothing comes of the resulting free kick. A non-event.
32 min: Konsa is booked for cynically bringing down Saka, who was preparing to tear into space down the right. Arsenal want a red, but neither referee nor VAR show any interest in that. For the record, Targett was up with play and covering in the middle.
30 min: From the corner, Saka swings in for Holding, whose header is harmless. Villa go up the other end, and Traore nearly scores one of the goals of the season. He’s found by Barkley, and spins between Cedric and Holding. He’s free in the box! Traore goes for the scoop over the keeper. Ryan claws away. Barkley tries to follow up, but his shot is blocked. That would have been one hell of a goal. What a turn!
29 min: Grealish clips Saka, 25 yards out, just to the right of centre. Xhaka takes, curling a gorgeous free kick towards the top right. It’s right on the postage stamp, but Martinez, at full stretch, fingertips around the post for a corner. That’s sensational football all round, and a save for the Martinez scrapbook.
27 min: Xhaka fizzes a pass down the left channel for Pepe, whose shot takes a deflection off a Villa leg and loops towards the top left. Martinez claims well, right on his line, doing very well not to carry it over.
26 min: More faffing between Cedric and Gabriel, and Watkins very nearly nips off with the ball. But the Villa striker clumsily fouls Gabriel. Arsenal get away with it, but they’ve learned no lessons from the goal, it would seem.
25 min: Grealish twists and teases down the left, eventually releasing Targett on the overlap with a backheel. Targett’s low cross is sliced out of play by Holding for a corner. Grealish takes; Ryan punches away confidently. This is good end-to-end fun.
23 min: Some space for Saka down the right. He’s got options in the box, but slams the ball straight into Nakamba and has to settle for a corner. Saka takes himself, but it’s a hopeless delivery, flying miles over everyone’s head and out for a goal kick.
21 min: Lacazette wedges a cute ball down the inside-right channel, hoping to set up Saka, but there’s a bit too much weight on the pass and Martinez is able to smother.
20 min: Cash curls high from the right. Watkins is winding back his neck with the hope of heading home from eight yards, but Gabriel has read the danger and makes a crucial clearance.
18 min: Lacazette drives down the middle of the park. He’s got Pepe to one side, Saka free on the other. He tries to release Saka down the right, but Mings reads the play smartly and intercepts. That’s a goal-saving intervention, because Villa were extremely light at the back, and had Lacazette picked the pass, Arsenal would have been away.
16 min: Saka takes on McGinn down the right. He’s stripped of possession, and McGinn is this close to finding Watkins down the left with a long pass. Bellerin intercepts. Both teams are going for this. A few goals wouldn’t be the worst start to the weekend.
14 min: Grealish, surrounded by blue shirts, makes a slippery run into the Arsenal box from the left and wins Villa’s first corner of the afternoon. Grealish takes himself. It’s fired towards the near post, where Saka wallops clear.
13 min: Arsenal have enjoyed 74 percent of possession up to this point. But here we are. It is what it is.
12 min: Troare clatters into Xhaka out on the Arsenal left, and it’s a chance to load the box. The free kick isn’t sent straight into the mixer, switched instead to the right, where Bellerin awaits. He swings it in from there, but it’s easily cleared by Villa.
10 min: Now Pepe’s down clutching his head. He should be fine, having simply taken the ball flush on the beak. A quick grimace, the sting subsides, and he’s up and running again.
9 min: Nope. The medical staff have given both players the once-over, and they’re good to go again.
8 min: Konsa and Lacazette clash heads, so could we see the first concussion substitute in the long history of English top-flight football?
7 min: Arsenal are certainly seeing more of the ball in these early exchanges. They’ll be happy enough with their start, with one rather obvious exception.
5 min: Arsenal stream forward again. Lacazette scoops a pass down the inside-left channel for Smith-Rowe, who enters the Villa box and cuts back, hoping to find Pepe. He doesn’t, though, and the ball is eventually ushered out for a goal kick. What a lovely open start to this game.
4 min: Arsenal come straight back at Villa, winning a corner out on the right. It’s swung in deep. Gabriel gets a head on it at the far stick, but there’s neither power nor direction and the hosts clear.
Cedric plays a weak ball backwards towards Gabriel. Traore nips in down the right, enters the box, and pulls back for Watkins, who pokes into the bottom left. What a start for Villa! What an awful start to Ryan’s Arsenal career, a boyhood fan and all.
1 min: A nice brisk start on a brisk afternoon. Villa ping it around with purpose, Grealish and Watkins nearly opening Arsenal up down the left. Then ...
Arsenal get the party started ... but only after everyone takes the knee. There’s no room for racism. Kick it out.
The teams are out! Villa wear their grand old claret, while Arsenal are in third-choice blue. We’ll be off before you know it. In the meantime, here’s Charles Antaki on his linguistic millennium bugbear: “According to my extensive research (a 20-second check on Google Ngrams) the phrase ‘it is what it is’ took off more or less exactly on January 1st, 2000. Mikel Arteta, symbol of the 21st century.”
Pre-match entertainment.
Dean Smith seems pretty cheery, though. “People keep talking about a bad run of results, but we’ve won two of the last four, so it’s not that bad. People keep jumping on the Liverpool FA Cup game, so I keep saying I’ll add a few under-18 results where we’ve won as well onto that! We feel we’re OK. We didn’t play well on Wednesday night but we usually bounce back well. We’ve freshened it up.”
Mikel Arteta isn’t happy that David Luiz’s red card wasn’t rescinded. “It is what it is. We did what we had to do after the Wolves game, we put our case together and hoped the decision was going to be overturned. It wasn’t, surprisingly, seeing the Southampton boy got away with it. We have to accept it.” As for leaving Aubameyang on the bench? “I felt the players who played against Wolves deserved another chance today.”
Hopefully we won’t need to go down this road, but concussion substitutes are being used for the first time today, as part of a trial that will run for the rest of the season. Two permanent substitutions can now be made in the event of head injuries, even if all replacements have already been used. Should any concussion substitute be made, the opposing team will be allowed to make the equivalent number of changes.
Aston Villa, ninth, make two changes to the side that went down 3-1 at home to West Ham. Douglas Luiz and Anwar El Ghazi make way for Bertrand Traore and Marvelous Nakamba.
Arsenal, tenth, make two enforced changes in the wake of the Wolves fiasco. Bernd Leno and David Luiz are both suspended as a result of the red cards they picked up at Molineux. That hands a debut to Mat Ryan in goal, while Gabriel fills in at the back. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is on the bench again.
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Mings, Targett, Nakamba, McGinn, Traore, Barkley, Grealish, Watkins.
Subs: Heaton, Douglas Luiz, Trezeguet, El Ghazi, Engels, Sanson, Elmohamady, Davis, Ramsey.
Arsenal: Ryan, Bellerin, Holding, Gabriel, Cedric, Partey, Xhaka, Saka, Smith-Rowe, Pepe, Lacazette.
Subs: Ceballos, Odegaard, Willian, Runarsson, Aubameyang, Chambers, Pablo Mari, Elneny, Martinelli.
Referee: Chris Kavanagh (Lancashire).
Aston Villa did a proper number on Arsenal back in November. A 3-0 win at the Emirates that Dean Smith felt “was as good” as their famous 7-2 evisceration of Liverpool. Mikel Arteta by contrast described his listless side’s defeat as the worst of his short managerial career.
Times change, and at speed this season. While Villa were flying back then, they’re now on a stickier run, having lost four of their last six. Arsenal by contrast have recovered from those dark days when there were some slightly hysterical whispers about a relegation scrap. They’re much improved, although they’re coming off the back of defeat at Wolves and have only won two of their last five.
In other words, we’re dealing with two inconsistent but entertaining and (generally) upwardly mobile teams. Villa could complete their first league double over the Gunners since 1993, though February is rarely good to them: they’ve lost 16 of their last 18 Premier League fixtures during this month. So both teams have their reasons for fancying this. It’s on!
Kick off: 12.30pm GMT.
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