Aston Villa will try to get their Premier League form back on track when they visit AFC Bournemouth on Saturday afternoon.
Villa head for the south coast with three defeats in their last six Premier League fixtures and must correct course in order to protect or even rebuild the buffer that’s kept them in the Champions League places up to this point.
Manager Unai Emery must be irked by the recent drop in standards. With two big Premier League matches coming up inside just a few days, he’ll be making that clear to his players on the eve of the trip to Dorset.
For all Villa’s little dips and wobbles at times in the 2025-26 season, they’ve only lost two matches back-to-back once, in August, against Brentford and Crystal Palace.
Those two games were the low point of the campaign overall and also the nadir of an awful start in the league. Since then, Villa have lost four times in the league, once in the Europa League and once on penalties in the League Cup.
After losing to Brentford again last Sunday, it’s imperative that Villa don’t come up short at Bournemouth. Two consecutive losses would be an indicator that injury problems are indeed going to hold Villa back and their recent form is a trend, not a blip.
That’s not to say it’ll be easy. It won’t. Bournemouth are no pushover. The Cherries have won their last two, including a home win over Liverpool, and they’ve only been beaten twice in the league at the Vitality Stadium this season.
Their 4-0 defeat at the hands of Villa in November continues to be an outlier.
Emery told reporters on Friday that both striker Ollie Watkins and Amadou Onana are ready to go and in contention to start against Bournemouth if selected.
The pair returned to training on Thursday after minor injuries along with Brazilian winger Alysson, who is not yet available to make his Villa debut this weekend.
Ross Barkley is back in the frame too, which should help ease the weight of longer-term injuries keeping Boubacar Kamara, Youri Tielemans and John McGinn out of the side.
Emery has been presented with a few more choices than he’s had to make in recently fixtures and I think the selections are obvious enough with a crucial fixture next on the docket.
That means a return to the starting line-up for Watkins over new signing Tammy Abraham, who deputised against Brentford on Sunday, and for Onana, who is absolutely vital to Villa when fit.
Having opted for a debut for loanee Douglas Luiz last weekend, my money’s on Emery sticking with the returning midfielder alongside Onana, with Lamare Bogarde dropping to the bench.
Villa’s away game against Bournemouth will not be broadcast live in the UK.
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