Sunday's Super Single 2

Sheffield Wednesday vs Aston Villa Away no Clean Sheet

Head To Head: The sides haven't met since the Owls won a League Cup tie at Villa Park in 2001. They last met in the league in the 1999-00 Premier League with Villa winning both matches.

Stats: Wednesday suffered just 2 home defeats in the league last season. Only Hull could better that. Villa haven't won away since the opening day of last season at Bournemouth. They've played 20 away games since, losing 16 and drawing 4.

Reason: Villa are playing in the second tier for the first time in 28 years after their disastrous Premier League campaign last term. They head into the new season with a mood of cautious optimism following a change in owner and a new coach in the shape of Roberto Di Matteo. However in terms of the playing staff, the changes have taken longer to take place than would have been ideal.

The bulk of the side that will start at Hillsborough were at the club last season with Tommy Elphick, Pierluigi Gollini and Aaron Tshibola the only new arrivals. Ross Mccormack is likely to soon join them and would be an excellent and much-needed addition up front but he has been training on his own at Fulham and even if he signs in time is unlikely to be considered fit enough to start here. The problems that still exist in this Villa team were again highlighted in an abject Second Half display in a friendly with Middlesbrough last weekend and it may be a few weeks before we really start seeing signs of improvement.

This is about as tough a game as they could’ve had first up. Sheffield Wednesday only missed out on promotion in the play-off final last term and were outstanding at home all season losing just 2 of their 28 home games in all competitions. 18 of those games were wins and Carlos Carvalhal is the best thing to have happened to the Owls in quite a long time. They’ve not lost anyone of note and have added Steven Fletcher who should help out the impressive Fernando Forestieri up front.

All in all Wednesday ought to be in contention for the top six again and they can probably count themselves fortunate to be playing Villa early on before they’ve added more quality to this side and have won some games to help banish the memory of last season.