Aston Villa vs. Manchester City Statistics Preview
IBTimes

The Manchester City juggernaut is all set to roll into Villa Park and their hosts look like they have very little to offer in way of resistance.

The 2011/12 Premier League race seemed done and dusted some time back, with Roberto Mancini and his Citizens in an imperious vein of form. Fast forward to today, however, and, as United are so famously prone to doing, they have stormed back into title contention.

To their credit, however, City have kept their heads about them. They've ground out victories (1-0 wins against Wigan and Arsenal; and wins by the odd goal in five, against Tottenham and QPR), and won dominantly when they could. They've managed to keep the season, their confidence and their ambition going. Furthermore, the already awe-inspiring strike force of David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Mario Balotelli, Edin Dzeko and Samir Nasri is starting to come together very nicely for Mancini. Only four sides have managed to keep clean sheets against them, in the league - West Brom, Chelsea, Everton and Sunderland.

Aston Villa, meanwhile, are in near-wretched state. They've only won four times since November last year and have only kept 5 clean sheets all season long - the only heartening point from that statistic is that 4 of them were at home. Nevertheless, they are a side sorely short on confidence and the fact that fans are planning a protest against manager Alex McLeish ahead of Sunday's game cannot make things any easier. The Villans are, at the moment, fairly comfortably positioned in the league, with 7 points between them and the drop zone. They will, however need to start picking up points. The only satisfaction McLeish can possibly enjoy at the moment is that his side have been scoring fairly regularly in the last few games - they've found the net 10 times in the last 6 games (this includes the famous 3-1 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge).

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