Wolves traveling in the hope that a local rivalry will prove to be a great leveller

While Villa enter the game still riding the high of Tuesday night’s impressive Champions League debut, Wolves do having exited the Carabao Cup at Brighton, with boss Gary O’Neil admitting he is beginning to sound like a broken record after another match in which his team played well in parts but succumbed to defeat due to their worrying tendency to concede soft goals.

Since the start of March they have kept only one clean sheet and that came against Championship opposition in the shape of Burnley in last month’s Carabao Cup second round.

In the Premier League, it is 16 matches since Wolves last recorded a shut-out, a run which has contributed to a run of only two wins in the last 17 games in all competitions.

Such statistics do not make for encouraging reading, heading into a fixture against a Villa team who could have scored several more goals than the six they did in the past week’s wins over Everton and Young Boys.

O’Neil can find some comfort in the fact the season is very much in its infancy and he was in a similar position 12 months ago before a home win over Manchester City sparked the campaign into life.

Villa are very good, but they are not infallible. They are themselves on a run of nine Premier League matches without a clean sheet, stretching back to last season. Everton did not have to work too hard to establish a two-goal advantage last weekend.

Wolves, meanwhile, showed against Newcastle their ability to cause teams problems and they are going to Villa Park with far more firepower than they did in March, when O’Neil started with 18-year-old Leon Chiwome up front.

The counter point to that is if tomorrow’s match does become a shoot-out, Emery has more bullets to fire. His team ooze confidence to the extent even when they trailed 2-0 to the Toffees a comeback still felt almost inevitable. In Jhon Duran they have one of the Premier League’s most in-form strikers – and he doesn’t even start matches.

A win for Villa would equal their best start to a top flight season through the first five matches since 1998.

Emery, who named an unchanged team in Switzerland on Tuesday, must decide whether the same XI are ready to start again for the third time in eight days as Villa look to continue their early season momentum.