Aston Villa v Birmingham: Second City derby essential stats
Watch live on Sky Sports Football from 11.30am on Sunday.
Sunday 25 November 2018 00:43, UK
The 127th Second City derby is live on Sky Sports on Sunday. These are some of the key stats ahead of one of English football’s standout fixtures.
Dean Smith's early impact
On Sunday, Dean Smith will have the honour of leading his boyhood club Villa against their biggest rivals. Smith joined the club last month from Brentford, where he put together a stylish, footballing side. He is only five games into the Villa job, but he seems to be changing things already.
Improved passing
This passing approach has started paying dividends offensively. Only Leeds and Swansea have created more chances over the last five games before this weekend, and Villa racked up 21 shots in their impressive win at Derby before the international break, the most of any team to visit Pride Park this season.
Blues two looking lively
Birmingham have tried a different approach this season: 34 per cent of their passes have been long (30 yards or more). Only Rotherham go long more often. It's an approach that's helped Garry Monk get the best out of 6ft 1in forward Lukas Jutkiewicz.
Jutkiewicz has scored nine league goals this season, nearly double his tally of five in the whole of last term. Four of those goals have been headers, and Jutkiewicz has won 209 aerial duels this season, 43 more than any other player heading into the weekend.
Villa are sweating on the fitness of centre-back James Chester, but should he not make it, fans can be reassured that stand-in centre-back Mile Jedinak is unlikely to get bullied in the air: the 6ft 2in Aussie has won 75 per cent of headers contested this season, the fourth-highest ratio of anybody in the Championship this season heading into the weekend.
It would be remiss of us not to mention Jutkiewicz's eight-goal strike partner Che Adams, who scored a hat-trick against Hull last time out. Birmingham's front two have scored 17 between them this season, more than Hull (16), Ipswich, Rotherham (both 14) and Bolton (11) after 17 games.
Monk works his magic
Jutkiewicz and Adams shouldn't take all the glory. Garry Monk has overseen an impressive turnaround since Birmingham picked up their first win at Leeds in September. Blues kicked off at Elland Road just a point outside the bottom three, but in the nine games since only Norwich have taken more points.
Another good omen for Blues fans is that Monk is unbeaten in eight meetings with Villa as a manager, winning six times. He has beaten Villa more times than any other side faced in his managerial career.
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Unlucky thirteen?
To balance that out, here is a good omen for Villa: they are unbeaten in the last 12 league derbies, the longest unbeaten league run ever in this fixture's history. You have to go back to March 2005 for the last time Birmingham beat Villa in the league, when a certain Steve Bruce guided Blues to a win over David O'Leary's Villa.
However, Birmingham did beat Villa in a League Cup quarter-final in December 2010, and went on to lift the trophy later that season. There is nothing like that on offer this Sunday but, in a fixture this charged, local bragging rights are more than enough.
