Key events
30 min: Hull are happy to sit in for a little bit. Villa knock it from side to side. Mendy charges forward from centre-back and clatters into Mings on halfway. He’s providing a bit of entertainment, for sure.
28 min: Villa’s spell of pressure ends with Mings shooting high and wide from distance.
26 min: Tzolakis saves from Barkley! McGinn dummies the low ball into the box and Barkley meets it about 15 yards out. He scuffs his shot low and Tzolakis gets his fingertips to it to touch it past the post. The corner comes to nothing.
24 min: McGinn’s inswinging corner breaks to Maatsen on the left of the penalty area. Villa go all the way back to Suzuki before McGinn’s low cross is punted clear by Mendy. Where’s Austin MacPhee when you need him?
22 min: Mendy shows his defensive qualities by stopping Cash’s surge into the box and conceding a corner …
20 min: Belloumi is a lovely player to watch. He glides inside again from the Hull right, lays the ball off to Mendy and the defender whacks a speculative effort well wide. Villa then beat the press but Buendía can’t find the right pass when approaching the final third and a dangerous move ends there.
18 min: McGinn finds Buendía in a pocket of space with a cute pass. Buendia shifts it to Jackson, who is forced wide and whose cross is hopeful if nothing else. Emery looks pleased with what he’s seeing on the touchline.
16 min: Villa enjoy a fair bit of the ball in the Hull half. A fast break for the hosts is stunted by midfielder Gourna-Douath’s inability to get a quick pass away.
14 min: Hemmings comes close to his first senior goal – the 19-year-old is fed in the box by Barkley but his left-footed shot is kept out by Tzolakis, who closes his legs just in time. There’s a good pace to this.
12 min: Belloumi jinks past Barkley and gives Villa a scare down the Hull right. His ball into the box is cut out and Villa try to settle into a rhythm.
“Afternoon, Billy,” writes Benjamin on email. “Was at a loose end so went to Whaddon Road to see Cheltenham Town contrive to draw from 2-0 ahead with Grimsby, and an unexpected encounter with Villa alum Andreas Weimann leading the line and scoring for the Robins.
“Now settled in the pub and hoping to see some new faces gelling quickly for current Villa – which we’re apparently obliged to call ‘Emery’s Villa 2.0’. With all due respect to Hull’s performances so far, I’d really hope that Villa can put something together today to show that the wheels are still somewhere in the vicinity of being on.”
Whaddon Road – nice little ground, I lived down the road for a few months.
8 min: Centre-back Mendy goes for goal from the, erm, halfway line. It bounces well short of Suzuki, who might feel a bit offended as he picks up the ball. Hull’s tails are up though. They are getting some joy down the left.
6 min: Giles gets into good space down the Hull left, arrives at the byline and crosses low for McBurnie. The striker can’t quite get a toe on the ball as Suzuki comes out to collect.
4 min: Hull settle into some possession. The place is bouncing.
2 min: Jackson heads wide! Early chance for Villa as Maatsen crosses from the left, Jackson rises between the Hull centre-backs and heads it back beyond the near post.
Kick-off
After the PR announcer says a very boisterous hello to all four stands of the MKM Stadium in turn, the football mercifully comes to our rescue. Villa get us under way in sky blue and claret.
Hull would go top of the Premier League with a healthy win …
Here come the teams. Hull have won two, Villa have lost two – but I’d say it’s pretty tough to call.
“I am looking forward to watching how we will respond,” says Unai Emery as his Aston Villa team come into this off the back of two opening defeats and a tumultuous transfer window.
We are trying to build again our structure as strong as possible. Today is a new opportunity to try to get better. Our preparation was good last week. We were close, more or less, to be in a good shape with the players [against Arsenal].
Today is a new challenge against Hull City, who are performing fantastically. Already they are confident. This is our challenge.
The last Villa manager to come here in the Premier League was Paul Lambert, who was sacked the day after a 2-0 defeat in February 2015.
“Easy to say, three in a row,” smiles Hull Sergej Jakirovic in his pre-match interview, playing down the significance of a possible third win out of three since promotion for Hull.
I know Aston Villa had a lot of changes. They sold a lot of players – a lot of good players. This is also our chance today to push them. Maybe there is pressure on them but they are used to this.
Hull’s Lucas Herrington: ‘Zlatan told me not to fear anyone in the Premier League’
Herrington made the headlines this summer with his impressive displays as an 18-year-old centre-back for Australia at the World Cup – before missing a decisive penalty in their shootout exit to Egypt in the last 32. Zlatan Ibrahimovic offered to have a chat with the Colorado Rapids defender after that penalty miss.
Herrington, who turns 19 today, has since sealed a move to the Premier League and sat down for an interview with Joey Lynch this week …
Zlatan said: ‘Really, don’t fear anyone; I’m here for a reason, so just go enjoy it.’ It’s a great league; he played in it. His message was just to go have fun, and don’t fear anything. Go, work hard, be yourself … because it’s a great experience to play in the Premier League.
Read more …
It’s fair to say Aston Villa are have operated in a totally different transfer market to Hull this summer – they’ve spent over £250m and still made a healthy profit after the sales of Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins. Hull have shelled out over £150m on virtually an entire other team but not recouped nearly as much.
Hull arrivals: Nobel Mendy (£20m), Konstantinos Tzolakis (£20m), Lucas Herrington (£17.1m), Ilyas Ansah (£14.5m), Tim Iroegbunam (£13m), Mohamed-Ali Cho (£13m), Christos Mouzakitis (£12.9m), Brooke Norton-Cuffy (£12m), Jens Hjertø-Dahl (£10m), Sorba Thomas (£7.5m), Joe Gelhardt (£6.5m), Jack Butland (£3.5m), Lucas Gourna-Douath (£3.4m), Elliot Stroud (£3m), Robinio Vaz (loan), Hidemasa Morita (free), Matt Targett (free), Oscar Zambrano (undisc.)
Total spend: £156.4m
Transfer balance: -£141.6m
Aston Villa arrivals: Johan Mamzambi (£51m), Nicolas Jackson (£47.5m), Ibrahim Mbaye (£47m), João Gomes (£34m), Zion Suzuki (£30m), Taylor Harwood-Bellis (£25m), Matteo Ruggeri (£21.4m), Leon Goretzka (free), Aaron Wan-Bissaka (loan), Alejandro Garnacho (loan)
Total spend: £255.9m
Transfer balance: +£60.7m
Starting lineups
Hull make one change from their 1-0 win against Coventry last Saturday as Lucas Gourna-Douath replaces Hidemasa Morita in midfield. The scorer of the winner at Coventry, Liam Millar, has since joined Birmingham. There are four deadline-day signings on the bench.
Hull (3-4-3): Tzolakis; Ajayi, Egan, Mendy; Coyle, Slater, Gourna-Douath, Giles; Belloumi, McBurnie, Stroud
Subs: Phillips, Thomas, Hjertø-Dahl, Norton-Cuffy, Herrington, Targett, Mouzakitis, Vaz, Cho
Tyrone Mings for Pau Torres at centre-back is Villa’s only change from their 1-0 defeat to Arsenal last Monday. Ibrahim Mbaye is on the bench after his £47m move from PSG.
Aston Villa (4-2-3-1): Suzuki; Cash, Lindelöf, Mings, Maatsen; Kamara, Barkley; McGinn, Buendía, Hemmings; Jackson
Subs: Bizot, Ruggeri, Torres, Garnacho, Abraham, Mbaye, Bogarde, Wan-Bissaka, Alysson
The referee is Michael Oliver – the best in the country.
Preamble
Life is pretty good for Sergej Jakirovic right now – his unfancied Hull team have won their first two games back in the Premier League and yesterday he signed a new two-year deal as head coach. In the opposing dugout today is Unai Emery, already bordering on beleaguered, who is seeking to put a turbulent transfer window behind him and get Aston Villa off the mark for the season.
If it wasn’t for Tottenham and alphabetical order, Villa would have been bottom of the league after losing their opening two fixtures without scoring a goal. Emiliano Martínez, Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins are gone but there is hope in the arrivals of fresh faces like Zion Suzuki, Nicolas Jackson and the exciting teenager Ibrahim Mbaye – all three are involved today.
Villa’s first away trip of the season was a 4-0 drubbing at Brighton – how will they fare in their second? Kick-off is at 5.30pm (BST). If you want to get involved, feel free to send me an email.