Overview
Aston Villa still has a chance to compete for the Premier League title this season after a convincing 2-0 victory at Newcastle United's home ground. That result helped Unai Emery's team narrow the gap to 4 points compared to the leading team Arsenal, who just lost to Manchester United 2-3 right at home.
Emery's army also pocketed another important victory just 3 days before, right in the 100th match of the Spanish coach in the Europa League. Villa defeated Fenerbahce 1-0 in Turkey to soon win a direct ticket to the round of 16 before a matchday.
Currently, Villa is tied with Lyon at the top of the table, after winning 6/7 group stage matches (against Fenerbahce, Basel, Young Boys, Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Feyenoord and Bologna). They have only lost one away match against Go Ahead Eagles in the third round.
The representative of Birmingham has enough grounds to be confident when hosting Salzburg. Villa has won 19/22 of their most recent home matches in all competitions (1 draw, 2 losses) and will aim for a seventh consecutive victory in the European Cup at Villa Park. However, in their most recent home match in the Premier League, they lost to Everton 0-1.
Notably, Villa has never met Salzburg and has only faced Austrian teams four times in history, all in the Europa League qualifiers against Rapid Vienna. Their record against Austrian representatives is 1 win (in 2009), 1 draw and 2 losses.
In the opposite direction, after 3 consecutive seasons of stopping from the Champions League group stage, Red Bull Salzburg is facing the risk of being eliminated early again in the Europa League. However, the 3-1 victory at home against Basel last week helped them rekindle hope for the knockout round.
That is Salzburg's second victory in the group stage this season, after a 2-0 home win against Go Ahead Eagles - the team that defeated Aston Villa as mentioned. In addition, Thomas Letsch's team has lost 5 matches against Porto, Lyon, Ferencvaros, Bologna and Freiburg.
Salzburg is currently 2 points behind Celtic, who are currently in 24th place - the last spot in the play-offs. Therefore, they are forced to win all 3 points against Aston Villa, and expect other results to support them if they want to secure a ticket to the next round. Otherwise, Salzburg will be eliminated.
Leading the Austrian Bundesliga after more than half a season, but Salzburg has not played any official match since December 14, 2025 due to winter breaks. Their next official match in the domestic league will be the Austrian national cup quarter-finals against Wolfsberger this weekend, just 3 days after the decisive away match at Villa Park.
Another statistic also does not support the Austrian representative. Salzburg has not won in the last 8 encounters with English teams in European cups (2 draws, 6 losses). Those two draws were against Blackburn Rovers (2-2) in the 2006-2007 UEFA Cup and against Chelsea (1-1) in the Champions League group stage in the 2022-2023 season.
Expected lineup:
Aston Villa: Bizot, Garcia, Lindelof, Mings, Digne, Bogarde, Onana, Hemmings, Sancho, Guessand, Bailey.
Schlager, Trummer, Gadou, Schuster, Kratzig, Kitano, Diabate, Bidstrup, Baidoo, Ratkov, Alajbegovic.
The match between Aston Villa and Salzburg takes place at 3:00 AM on January 30 (Vietnam time).
