Cardiff City v Aston Villa. Match preview

[Cardiff City Mad]

Aston Villa with new skipper John Terry are the visitors to CCS today

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With over 22,000 tickets sold there should be a great atmosphere at CCS today when Cardiff City face Aston Villa.

After a disappointing campaign last season, where Villa finished one place below City, the bookies have made villa one of the favourites to go back up to the Premier League.

Led by new skipper John Terry Villa opened their season last weekend with a 1 - 1 draw at home to Hull.

Preview from Sky Sports:

Cardiff have no new injury concerns for the Sky Bet Championship visit of Aston Villa.

So Bluebirds boss Neil Warnock is likely to revert to the starting line-up which claimed an opening day league win at Burton.

Warnock made eight changes for the Carabao Cup clash against Portsmouth in midweek, and Neil Etheridge, Lee Peltier, Sol Bamba and Kenneth Zohore will be among those returning. Kadeem Harris (ankle), Callum Paterson (knee), Lee Camp (knee) and Rhys Healey (cruciate) remain out.

Can Kenneth Zohore give John Terry the runaround today?

Villa boss Steve Bruce is likely to turn to his big guns once again for the game. Bruce made nine changes for Wednesday's Carabao Cup victory at Colchester, resting Sam Johnstone, Neil Taylor, John Terry, Alan Hutton, Ahmed Elmohamady, Glenn Whelan, Leandro Bacuna, Henri Lansbury and Gabriel Agbonlahor from the side which drew 1-1 with Hull at the weekend.

Loan signing Josh Onomah, who appeared as a second-half substitute against the Tigers, was handed a first start and will hope he did enough to warrant another in south Wales, while there was a full debut for experienced defender Christopher Samba. However, defender Jordan Amavi has joined Marseille on loan with a view to completing a permanent move and Bacuna could soon follow him through the Villa Park exit door.

Opta stats:

Cardiff have lost just two of their last 13 home league games against Villa (W8 D3), keeping clean sheets on eight occasions including each of the last two.

Aston Villa have won seven of the last 10 league encounters with the Bluebirds (D1 L2), although they lost on their last visit to Cardiff.

Steve Bruce has won nine of his 11 previous managerial meetings with Neil Warnock (D1 L1), but his only defeat in those 11 games came in the most recent game in January, with Villa losing 1-0 to Cardiff.

Kenneth Zohore has scored 12 Championship goals in 2017 - only Chris Wood (17), Yann Kermorgant and Lasse Vibe (both 13) have scored more.

Neil Warnock:

“There has always been an aura about Villa. It’s a massive club and they should be in that top half of the Premier League.

“Our fans know they’re going to get good value for money Saturday, whatever the result, and they can be proud of their own Club.

“Now’s the time to come on board. We need everybody!”

Steve Bruce:

"I`m hoping by the time the window finishes that we`ll have an Aston Villa team in the same sort of mould as Cardiff. The one thing you do know what you`re going to get with Neil Warnock`s team is that they`ll be highly committed, they`ll be up and at you with a physical presence in a lot of areas, very good at free-kicks, very direct and that`s what the Championship is.

"We play the complete opposites in the next two away games. One`s going to be physical, a typical Neil Warnock team and then we`ve got Reading who play a totally different way on Tuesday so that`s what the Championship is and we`ve got two big challenges ahead."

Match officials:

Referee: TIM ROBINSON
Assistants: Nick Hopton and Adam Matthews
Fourth Official: Savvas Yianni