Aston Villa v Manchester City: Premier League – live

The players walk out of the tunnel, into the Birmingham rain. It doesn’t sound espeically hostile, although you can’t always tell on TV. The City fans are once again tooled up with inflatable bananas.

“Hi Rob,” writes Gary Naylor. “Barreling down the péage from Girona to Avignon, having spent the morning in the Dali Museum (still a third rater if you ask me), I have a moral dilemma. Can we ask Grok to direct us to a bar showing the Everton match? Or would that be shaking hands with both the AI and Musk devils? It was easier when you just had to wait until Monday afternoon and pick up a Guardian International for 50 francs.”

Heh. I remember reading Austria Vienna 5-1 Manchester United in the results section in August 1991. That was – and still is – the extent of my knowledge about the game. The papers didn’t cover the game, because it was still the cricket season.

Enzo Maresca on the omission of Phil Foden

The good thing is that because we play so many games we have so many players available and to choose from. We want to keep the players fresh and fit.

Next!

Joking and next!ing aside, it’s a sign of the times that Foden scored a hat-trick on Wednesday yet most people expected him to be left out today.

Elliot Anderson has been chatting to TNT Sports. When asked whether he expected City to receive another hostile reception – this is their first away game since Anfield – he chuckled and said: “Yeah, probably. Everywhere we go, we’ll get it.”

On this day in 2022… Unai Emery was appointed as Villa’s head coach. The jury were released a long time ago.

Unai Emery’s pre-match thoughts

It’s a huge, huge challenge today. They are a team who try to dominate, to impose their positioning, their skills and their tactical structure. We must be so intense in our focus and in our actions. Then, when we have the ball, we have try to threaten them. It’s a huge challenge, collectively and individually, against the best team in the league right now.

City have been beaten on their last three visits to Villa Park: 1-0 December 2023, 2-1 in December 2024 and 1-0 last October.

Villa also won at the Etihad in May, which sealed their first league double over City since 1962-63. What does it all mean?

“There are no coincidences in life,” writes Krishnamoorthy V. “Your mention of The Shining in the preamble connects to The Overlook Hotel. Is it a reference to what the Premier League will do in its assessment of City’s appeal?”

You are the caretaker.

Unai Emery and Enzo Maresca continue their policy of rotation, rotation, rotation. Matty Cash, Ian Maatsen, Boubacar Kamara and Johan Manzambi return to the Villa team in place of Tyrone Mings, Ibrahim Mbaye, Ross Barkley and Emi Buendia.

Phil Foden, who scored a hat-trick against AEK in the week, is back on the City bench. Marc Guehi, Iliman Ndiaye, Jeremy Doku and Erling Haaland come into the team; the other players to drop out are Rico Lewis, Allan and Floyd Samba.

Aston Villa (4-2-3-1) Suzuki; Cash, Lindelof, Torres, Maatsen; Kamara, Joao Gomes; Alysson, Manzambi, McGinn; Jackson.

Subs: Bizot, Mings, Barkley, Buendia, Mbaye, Bogarde, Goretzka, Madjo, Hemmings.

Man City (4-2-3-1) Donnarumma; Khusanov, Dias, Guehi, Gvardiol; Anderson, Fernandez; Ndiaye, Cherki, Doku; Haaland.

Subs: Rulli, Kovacic, Ait Nouri, Vitor Reis, Bouaddi, O’Reilly, Foden, McAidoo, Lewis.

Referee Peter Bankes (Merseyside)

Bayern Munich say their head coach Vincent Kompany, who was taken to hospital after collapsing during training on Friday, will be absent for “weeks rather than days”. Kompany is in a stable condition in hospital.

You can read about that, and all the rest of the day’s fitba news, on our matchday live blog.

It was five months ago but it feels a lot longer. When these two sides met in May to finish the season, the contest doubled as Pep Guardiola’s leaving party after 10 years in the job and twice as many trophies, an era now laden with asterisks. It must be surreal for Aston Villa supporters, too. Their 2-1 victory at the Etihad Stadium, inspired by two goals from Ollie Watkins to complete a league double over City, came only four days after their Europa League triumph in Istanbul, where Youri Tielemans, Morgan Rogers and Emi Buendía were the scorers.

Buendía is the only one left in claret and blue as Unai Emery builds a new side, one that has picked up in form after a single point from their first four league games. City, meanwhile, are thriving on the pitch: victory would make them just the third side to win their first eight games of a Premier League season.

You remember Manchester City, don’t you? They made one or two headlines earlier in the month, but have since been kept off the back pages by a neighbouring circus.

Since the weird (and wonderful, if you’re a City fan) win at Anfield, Enzo Maresca’s team have played three games, all at home. They were undressed by PSG, held off Ipswich last weekend and hammered AEK on Tuesday. Oh, and Elliot Anderson made the James Bond shortlist.

City are top of the Premier League with a perfect record of seven wins from seven. But like life, The Shining and those dreams in which all your teeth fall out, nobody really knows what it means. City are on 21 points, but for all we know it could effectively be -29. Yes, I have just pulled that number from my fundament. No, I don’t have any inside knowledge.

The only thing the City players – who, lest we forget, had nowt to do with the 115 charges – can win football matches and see where it takes them.

Today’s will be tougher than most. Unai Emery has somehow squashed a year of transition into a month. Villa lost six of their Europa League-winning XI in the summer and started the season terribly. But they have won five of the last six games and are playing with a rhythm that belies the summer rebuild. On recent evidence, losing all those great players really was just a flesh wound.

Kick off 12.30pm.