Craven Cottage next, with a 3pm (London time) kick off against 10th placed Fulham on Saturday, 30 January 2010.

Fulham have a good home record – it is their away record that lets them down. Villa’s away record is, well, not too bad – won 4, drawn 3 and lost 3.

Just looking at the last five league games, Fulham have only managed one point (4 of those games were away), while Villa have managed five points (4 of those games were at home!). Our last two league matches were goalless draws.

Fulham have a long injury list apparently – their manager Roy Hodgson is quoted as saying “Our midfield is terrific but in defence and attack we've been hit really hard.”

We, also, have a few injuries – Warnock, Carew and Reo-Coker are still out (Bouma is back in full training, by the way ) – so reports say that we will field an unchanged team from the midweek game against Arsenal. So that is:

--------------Friedel
Cuéllar, Collins, Dunne, L. Young
Downing, Milner, Petrov, A. Young
------Agbonlahor, Heskey

Fulham’s team last time out was:

--------------------Schwarzer
Hughes (Villa old boy), Smalling, Hangeland, Baird
------------------------Gera
Riise, Murphy, Kagisho Evidence Dikgacoi (wow!), Duff
-----------------------Zamora

The equivalent game last season (on 9 May 2009) ended Fulham 3 Villa 1.  Ashley Young scored our only goal, and the team that day was:
Friedel; L. Young (Heskey 65), Knight, Davies, Shorey (Reo-Coker 65); Milner, Petrov, Barry, A. Young; Carew, Agbonlahor.

Clearly, we have a much better team now, particularly defensively.  Fulham may dominate in midfield, especially if we stick to 4-4-2, but they will find it hard to score against us.  As usual, I think we’ll be looking to set pieces and the speed of our wingers to catch them on the break.

I can see a potential third 0-0 in a row here but, if we can just be a little more ruthless in front of goal, we can definitely nick this.  0-1 to the Villa

___________________________

UPDATE 30/1/10

Well, I got that wrong, didn't I? lol  Villa won 0-2 with two well-taken goals by Gabby. Fulham were poorer than I expected, but credit to a good all round performance by the Villa boys