View: Three things to look out for ahead of Aston Villa v Leicester City
Aston Villa will welcome Leicester City to Villa Park on Saturday in their next Premier League game.
Steven Gerrard and his men will be desperate to end a four-match losing run that has seen them drop to 15th place in the Premier League table.
Here, Villa News looks at three things the Villans can expect ahead of their upcoming all-Midland encounter:
Leicester fatigue
Leicester have played a lot of matches this season due to their run in the Europa Conference League. Villa will head into their upcoming Premier League match having had a two-week rest but in those 14 days, Leicester will have played four times. Leicester have played Crystal Palace, PSV and Newcastle since Villa’s last game against Tottenham and Brendan Rodgers’ men face Everton tonight [20 April]. If Villa’s players don’t look sharper than Leicester’s on Saturday, there should be a massive concern for Gerrard.
James Maddison on fire
If there’s one Leicester player who’s been in good form lately, it’s James Maddison. In his last four Premier League games, he’s assisted two goals and scored one of his own while he also scored in Leicester’s Europa Conference League semi-final win over PSV last Thursday. Villa’s defensive performances have been poor lately and Maddison, 25, definitely has the ability to cause problems for Tyrone Mings and co.
Stop-start game
Leicester and Aston Villa are among the top teams in the Premier League for winning fouls so you can expect there to be plenty of free-kicks – and potentially penalties – in this game. According to stats by WhoScored, Villa players are fouled more times per game than anyone else in the Premier League this season [13.5]. Leicester are joint-fourth for fouls won [10.9]. John McGinn wins most of those fouls for Villa [2.1 per game] while Maddison [1.7] is Leicester’s best at winning free-kicks.
In other Aston Villa news, Villa could be priced out of a permanent deal to sign Philippe Coutinho.