Big Arsenal vs Villa prediction emerges after what Jeff Stelling said ‘off air’ on talkSPORT

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It has been an extraordinary run for Unai Emery‘s team, who had been without a win in any of their opening six games of the season.Arsenal beat Brighton 2-1 at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday, but have looked stretched thin in defence of late.Riccardo Calafiori was forced to leave the warm-up injured, joining a host of other defenders already on the injury table.Credit: ImagoAlex Crook makes Arsenal vs Aston Villa predictionArsenal lost 2-1 to Villa at the start of December, with Emi Buendia‘s 95th-minute winner leaving many wondering how the Gunners would recover. Villa are also set to cope with absences, after Boubacar Kamara and Matty Cash both hit with one-game suspensions after picking up their fifth yellow cards of the season against Chelsea.Speaking to talkSPORT on Monday, journalist Alex Crook said: “Villa keep confounding us really.“Because you’re watching them play and I was obviously at Villa Park for the Manchester United game, you’d have paid close attention to what they did against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.“They weren’t particularly good in either game, in fact Chelsea outplayed them for an hour at the weekend but they hang in there and they find a way to win.

This might be where Villa get found out.”For how long can Villa deny the statistics?It makes for quite incredible reading to look at Opta‘s expected Premier League table compared to the actual.Expected points are calculated on expected goals (xG) and expected goals against (xGA), with each game simulated hundreds of times to work out the likeliest result based on the numbers produced by each team. While Villa sit third in the Premier League, they have often failed to produce good numbers in either metric.

Aston VillaPremier League 25-26 (expected)Premier League 25-26 (actual)Points19.939Goals for19.929Goals against25.419Position16th3rdWhile not, by any means, an indicator of a bad team, the numbers would suggest that Emery’s team have enjoyed the rub of the green in terms of the opposition’s finishing, and their own. The Villans have registered just 19.9 expected points this season, which would place them 16th in the expected table.These numbers are not the be-all and end-all, clearly, but they do typically have a way of catching up to the teams who defy them.