Aston Villa vs West Ham United. Premier League.
Villa ParkAttendance38,193.
Saturday 26 December 2015 18:46, UK
Aston Villa will discover later in the week whether captain Micah Richards is fit to return to the side to face West Ham on Boxing Day.
The centre-back has missed the last three games with a knee injury, making his last appearance in the home defeat to Watford at the end of November.
His return would be a boost to a Villa side looking for their first league win since the opening day of the season and a first under new boss Remi Garde.
They are bottom of the table at Christmas, 10 points from safety, and Garde thinks they will need to win nearly half of their remaining 21 games to survive.
West Ham are in a far better position in the top half of the table but have not won in seven games since beating Chelsea in October.
They have also failed to score in their last three games, although they have kept clean sheets in each of them with goalless draws.
Team news
Garde must wait to discover whether he will have Richards available at Villa Park, but long-term absentees Jordan Amavi and Gary Gardner are out.
West Ham have no new injury concerns but Slaven Bilic thinks Dimitri Payet is set to return ahead of schedule and could feature against Liverpool in early January.
Manuel Lanzini and Andy Carroll remain sidelined but Bilic is hopeful that they will be fit to play in the clash with Southampton on Monday.
Opta stats
Both Aston Villa and West Ham have failed to score in three of the last four meetings between the two sides.
West Ham have won just one of their last eight trips to Villa Park in the Premier League (W1 D2 L5), failing to score in five of the games in that run.
Aston Villa have won just one of their last 14 Premier League games played on Boxing Day (W1 D4 L9).
The team that were bottom of the Premier League at Christmas in the last two seasons has stayed up (Leicester City in 2014-15 and Sunderland in 2013-14). The only other team to do this in the Premier League era were West Brom in 2004-05.
West Ham have drawn their last three Premier League games 0-0 - the first time they've been involved in three successive goalless draws in the league.
Only on three previous occasions have a team drawn four successive Premier League games 0-0; Arsenal (Feb 2009), Spurs (Feb 2001) and Arsenal (Oct 1993).
Merson's prediction
Remi Garde says they need 10 wins from 21 games? I reckon Man United would do well to do that! I don't mean that in a horrible way, but I just don't see Villa doing it. That's a lot of wins, they've only won once all season, and at the moment I can't see Villa winning a football match.
West Ham have had some real injury problems, I know they haven't won for a while either, but they've got a bit of an excuse there.
Even with players out, though, I'm still struggling to see a Villa victory so I'm going for the draw.
PAUL PREDICTS: 1-1 (9/2 with Sky Bet)
Betting
Aston Villa are Sky Bet's marginal favourites at 8/5 despite being odds-on favourites for relegation, with West Ham 7/4 to inflict another defeat on their struggling hosts.
However, the draw looks the most logical outcome at 11/5 with the Hammers sharing the spoils in each of their last four games, while Remi Garde's men have drawn two of their last three. Rudy Gestede heads the first goalscorer betting at 5/1 while Andy Carroll is rated the visitors' main threat at 11/2.
