We look ahead to Tuesday’s Champions League game at Villa Park with our Aston Villa vs Bologna prediction and preview. Unai Emery’s men will look to continue their impressive return to Europe with another win.
Aston Villa vs Bologna Stats: The Key Insights
- The Opta supercomputer has Aston Villa as favourites to win this one, with the hosts winning 56.9% of its 10,000 pre-match simulations.
- Victory for Villa will see Unai Emery pick up his 25th win in the UEFA Champions League, becoming the fifth Spanish manager to do so in the competition after Pep Guardiola, Rafael Benítez, Vicente del Bosque and Luis Enrique.
- Only Feyenoord (606) have applied more pressures in the opposition’s half in the Champions League this season than Bologna (572), with 353 of them coming in the final third.
Aston Villa will bid to preserve their 100% record in this season’s Champions League when they host Bologna at Villa Park on Tuesday.
In their first campaign back in Europe’s premier club competition since they won the European Cup in the 1982-83 season, Villa first beat Young Boys 3-0 in Switzerland before defeating Bayern Munich 1-0 at home.
They’ve started the Premier League season well too, with a 3-1 triumph at Fulham on Saturday taking them up to fourth with just one defeat from their eight matches.
Another victory on Tuesday would see them equal their longest streak of victories in the European Cup/Champions League, last stringing together three consecutive wins between September and October in 1981.
Villa could become only the third side since the competition’s rebrand in 1992-93 to win their opening three games in the Champions League without conceding after Málaga in 2012-13 and Leicester City in 2016-17.
Just like in the Premier League, Morgan Rogers has impressed in Europe. The former Middlesbrough man has completed more dribbles than any other player in the Champions League this season (nine), with five of those coming against Bayern last time out.
While Villa have started with two victories, Bologna’s Champions League campaign opened with a 0-0 draw at home to Shakhtar Donetsk and then a 2-0 defeat at Anfield against Liverpool.
Bologna are winless in their last four games in major European competition (two draws, two defeats), and could become the first side to fail to score in their first three games in the Champions League since FK Austria Wien in 2013-14 (a run of four).
The Rossoblù have also started the domestic season poorly, winning just one of their opening eight Serie A games and languishing in the bottom half of the table after drawing 2-2 away at Genoa on Saturday.
In terms of team news, Villa welcomed John McGinn back at Fulham, while Tyrone Mings is nearing a return having suffered a serious knee injury on the opening day of last season.
Bologna, meanwhile, will make late decisions on Dan Ndoye and Michel Aebischer, while the likes of Nicolò Cambiaghi and Oussama El Azzouzi remain absent.
Aston Villa vs Bologna Head-to-Head
Villa and Bologna have never faced each other in any competition. The Villans have lost four of their six European games against Italian sides, with the two wins both coming at home against Inter in October 1990 and September 1994.
After winning their first three games against English opponents in major European competition, Bologna have lost their last two such games, both away against Leeds United in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in April 1967 and then Liverpool in this season’s Champions League.
Aston Villa vs Bologna Prediction
The Opta supercomputer is backing Villa to make it three wins from three in this season’s Champions League, coming out on top in Tuesday’s contest in 56.9% of pre-match simulations.
Bologna could really do with a win, and they take the three points 20.5% of the time. A draw might be a decent result for Bologna considering Villa’s form, and that occurs in 22.6% of simulations.
Prior to this season’s Champions League getting under way, the Opta supercomputer gave Villa a 53.9% chance of finishing between ninth and 24th to get through to the play-off round; in the latest projections, they reach the last 16 69.1% of the time. Bologna’s chances of just getting a play-off spot have plummeted from 52.8% to 29.3%.
Aston Villa vs Bologna Predicted Lineups
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Tuesday, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Aston Villa vs Bologna Squads
Aston Villa: Emiliano Martínez, Robin Olsen, Joe Gauci, Matty Cash, Kosta Nedeljkovic, Ezri Konsa, Pau Torres, Diego Carlos, Tyrone Mings, Ian Maatsen, Lucas Digne, Boubacar Kamara, Ross Barkley, John McGinn, Youri Tielemans, Emiliano Buendía, Jaden Philogene, Amadou Onana, Jacob Ramsey, Morgan Rogers, Leon Bailey, Jhon Durán, Ollie Watkins.
Head Coach: Unai Emery
Bologna: Lukasz Skorupski, Federico Ravaglia, Emil Holm, Stefan Posch, Martin Erlic, Nicolo Casale, Charalampos Lykogiannis. Jhon Lucumí, Lorenzo De Silvestri. Sam Beukema, Juan Miranda, Nikola Moro, Remo Freuler, Oussama El Azzouzi, Tommaso Pobega, Lewis Ferguson, Michel Aebischer, Giovanni Fabbian, Riccardo Orsolini, Santiago Castro, Dan Ndoye, Samuel Iling-Junior, Jens Odgaard, Thijs Dallinga.
Head Coach: Vincenzo Italiano
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