At A Glance
Crystal Palace are the visitors to Villa Park on Boxing Day as Aston Villa look to secure consecutive Premier League victories.
Anwar El Ghazi’s brace and Bertrand Traoré fired the Villans past West Bromwich Albion last time out, pushing the club up to ninth in the table.
However, wins on home turf have been harder to come by for Villa recently, with the team currently winless in their last four games in B6.
Roy Hodgson’s Eagles will be looking to bounce back after a resounding 7-0 defeat against Liverpool in their last match.
The result was an anomaly for Palace, who hadn’t conceded more than two goals in a league match this season before the Reds racked up the goals.
The Londoners record on the road this season reads three wins, three defeats and a draw from their seven away games.
Standout Stats
Aston Villa have won two of their last three Premier League games against Crystal Palace (L1), as many as they had in their previous 12 against them in the competition (W2 D5 L5).
Crystal Palace have won just one of their eight Premier League away games against Aston Villa (D3 L4), beating them 1-0 in December 2013.
Crystal Palace have never scored more than once in 17 away league games against Aston Villa (W3 D4 L10), netting 11 goals in total in that run.
Aston Villa have won just one of their last 10 Premier League matches on Boxing Day (D4 L5), though this did come against Norwich last season. They last won top-flight games on consecutive Boxing Days in 1988/1989.
Aston Villa have kept seven Premier League clean sheets so far this season, more than any other side and as many as they kept in the whole of 2019-20. The Villans haven’t conceded in any of their last three Premier League games, last having a longer run of top-flight shutouts in February 2010 (4).
Crystal Palace have conceded in each of their last 13 Premier League games, since beating Southampton 1-0 on the opening weekend. The Eagles conceded as many goals in their 0-7 defeat to Liverpool last time out as they had in their six previous league games combined.
Aston Villa’s Anwar El-Ghazi has scored three goals in his last three Premier League games, as many as he had in his previous 34 in the competition.
The Last Meeting
Aston Villa were fighting for their Premier League lives the last time these two sides met back in July.
Starting the match seven points adrift of safety with four games left, Villa secured a vital win thanks to Trezeguet’s double.
The Egyptian broke through in first half injury time before notching his brace on the hour mark.
Team News
Ross Barkley and Ezri Konsa are set to return to training this week, but Trezeguet misses out through injury.
Former Villa striker Christian Benteke is available to play for Palace after serving a one-match suspension.
Gary Cahill suffered a hamstring injury against Liverpool last time out that may rule him out of the game, while Wayne Hennessey, Nathan Ferguson, Mamadou Sakho, Connor Wickham and Martin Kelly are all sidelined.
The Boss
"Crystal Palace will be smarting from the result against Liverpool. The Liverpool goalkeeper made some important saves which may have turned the game. They’ve had some really good results this season, so we’ll be expecting an organised Crystal Palace team coming to put things right."
Dean Smith
