Aston Villa v Man City LIVE: Premier League team news and line-ups as Jack Grealish returns to Villa Park
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Both sides are looking to turn around poor runs of form, with City having won just once in their last 11 matches. Aston Villa host Manchester City in the Premier League in the weekend’s early kick-off this afternoon, with both sides looking to put an end to a poor run of form.
Villa may have improved in Europe recently, but they have just three wins from their last 10 league games, though Unai Emery’s side still sit in a respectable seventh place in the league – and just two points behind today’s opponents. Meanwhile, Pep Guardiola’s side remain in an unprecedented run of poor form, with last weekend’s dramatic derby defeat to Manchester United meaning that they have just one win in their last 11 matches in all competitions.
Nevertheless, City remain in fifth place, just one point behind Nottingham Forest in the Champions League places, and a win today would take them level on points with Arsenal in third. Follow all the Premier League action with our live blog below:. Txiki Begiristain was looking forward to being entertained. Manchester City, often dubbed big spenders, had spent more than any other English club previously had on one player. They had made Jack Grealish the £100m man. Their director of football called his costliest recruit “one of the most exciting attacking players in world football”.
Three-and-a-half years later, Grealish returns to Aston Villa on Saturday as, arguably, neither an attacking player nor an exciting one. Instead, a maverick has been reinvented as a curiosity, a Pep Guardiola project who now does far fewer of the things often associated with excitement – score goals, make them, run at defenders – than he used to. There are those at Villa Park who will recognise a local accent and see a familiar face. But the player they might see is rather different.
