Man Utd come to Villa Park on Saturday for the early kick off game. For all the talk of being a point off of 5th place, we’re a full eight points behind Utd and they’re a point worse off than they were after 12 games last season. At that same point, we were just four points behind with 21 to their 25 points.

The league record against Utd at Villa Park makes sobering reading, the 1-1 and 0-0 draws in the last two seasons being the highlights, the previous six seasons delivering consecutive losses, scoring just one goal and shipping a total of 13.

However, we do currently sit a place above Utd in one table; the injury league. In fact, if one of the 17 players the two clubs cannot call on right now could be persuaded to play in goal, you could name an absolutely cracking team from this lot:-

Who would you put in goal?

Add Paul Scholes’ suspension, the virus that Utd insist is affecting their squad and Gary Neville also reportedly unavailable and this could be as good an opportunity to record the first league win over Utd at Villa Park for 15 years as we could hope for. Except we’re in the midst of our own injury crisis!

The good news for us is that we finally have two strikers fighting for a place again since Gabby’s half hour against Blackpool went without a hitch and Nathan Delfouneso is keen to continue playing after chalking up his first senior goal of the season.

Even better; Gabby Agbonlahor has just signed a new contract keeping him at the club until 2015.

Villa are one of six teams only separated by goal difference in the middle of the table, but there’s massive potential for some gaps to open up this weekend; Bolton (6th) travel to Wolves, Tottenham (7th) will host Blackburn, Sunderland (8th) are at Chelsea on Sunday, Liverpool (9th) will be at Stoke for the late game and West Brom (11th) will be at Wigan.

Man Utd are unbeaten so far this season, Villa are unbeaten at home. On recent form, Utd have the 4th best away record based on the last five games and Villa the 7th best home record. However, overall, Villa ranked 19th during the month of October alone. It was poor.

I’m sure we’d all settle for a draw before kick off, and at the moment that would appear to be the most likely outcome, but it goes without saying how much a win would mean to us right now and this will be as weak a Utd side as we could hope to come visiting.

Perhaps, rather than falling victim to complacency as we might with a full strength squad to select from, the youngsters out there on Saturday will raise their game and go for Utd’s jugular.

Anything could happen in this one and, aside from the early kick off, I’m really looking forward to it.