Aston Villa overcome Young Boys but match marred by violent clashes between fans and police

Aston Villa are one of Europe’s form teams with nine wins from their last 11 across all competitions and they can take a step towards the Europa League knockout stages with victory over Swiss club Young Boys tonight.

Unai Emery’s team are especially strong, winning six games in a row at Villa Park since the defeat by Crystal Palace in late August. That was their only loss in 29 home matches across all competitions.

As has been the case at various points at Emery’s career, Villa seem to be running hot with their results more impressive than some very average underlying data. For expected goal difference per 90 minutes, they rank 16th in the Premier League. Perhaps that can be accounted for by a rough start, but in their last two matches against Bournemouth and Leeds they have turned 3.3 xG into six goals, while conceding just once from 3.2 xG. Villa have some good finishers, but that feels unsustainable.

Nevertheless, they will fully expect to see off Young Boys with Morgan Rogers back to his best over the last few months and striker Ollie Watkins looking sharp again. The return of Youri Tielemans in midfield has also been a factor in their recent upturn. Emery has home comforts to look forward to again on Sunday, when Villa host Wolves in a west Midlands derby.

Emery says that good run of results has brought confidence at a time when his squad was not “together”.

He told a press conference: “It comes with confidence and how we reacted inside. In the moment we were not together. It starts with me, and the players following and sharing the message.

“We used the Europa League as a key moment to react, to get momentum with the results. Everything we changed we did collectively.

“Resilience is something you have to feel. When you are struggling, you have to be resilient and wait for your better moment.

“We did it in two matches against Everton and Sunderland. We were resilient. Not great results but we were resilient because we were in a bad moment and we needed to be resilient and wait for our best moment.”

Full team news on the way shortly.