Ignore the league table?

Two of the Championship’s biggest sides go head-to-head live on Sky Sports on Saturday when Aston Villa host Newcastle.

The clubs have come to blows 150 times in top-flight history, making this a staple fixture of the game in this country. But this will be just the fifth meeting between the two in the second tier, and the first in almost 80 years.

The table would suggest the outcome of this game, despite being played at Villa Park, is a no brainer. Newcastle are 15 places better off than their hosts. However, the Championship table doesn’t tell the whole story, as WhoScored.com explain…

Though the assumption that Rafa Benitez’s side should comfortably bounce back up to the Premier League is currently more accurate than that of Villa being the Magpies’ closest challengers, in truth it’s been a frustrating start to the campaign for both sides.

True, Newcastle sit third having averaged two goals per game and conceded just six in eight, but despite their far superior placing, the Toon Army have actually lost more league matches (3) than 18th-placed Villa.

That fact speaks volumes for both of these sides. While Newcastle are capable of tearing opponents apart at this level, they still have it within them to fail to show. That much is best illustrated in their last two results, hammering QPR 6-0 on the road before losing a second home game of the season to a Wolves side well-beaten themselves by Barnsley just days before.

The Championship, after all, is not the cakewalk that the odds might have suggested in Newcastle’s favour prior to the campaign.

As far as Villa are concerned it’s been a case of so near yet so far and the same old, same old in terms of the mental fragility that …

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