A Midlands derby with a Spanish flavour takes place at Villa Park on Wednesday when Unai Emery’s Aston Villa meet Julen Lopetegui’s Wolves.
Fifth from the bottom and one point above the relegation zone when he took over, Emery has quickly found the recipe for success with three wins in four moving Villa up to 12th in the table.
The ex-Arsenal boss made a big call to keep World Cup winner Emiliano Martinez on the bench against Tottenham on Sunday and was rewarded with the first clean sheet of his Villa reign in a 2-0 victory.
Lopetegui is only two games into his Molineux assignment, but Wolves have shown signs of improvement in beating Everton and suffering a narrow home loss to Manchester United to suggest they will soon be moving out of the bottom three.
Martinez is expected to return in goal for this one, but Emery’s post-match comments about the performance of Robin Olsen suggest it may not be completely cut and dried.
There could be a change in midfield too after John McGinn pulled up in the second half at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with what appeared to be a hamstring injury.
Jacob Ramsey is still expected to be absent through injury, so Emery will have a careful balancing act to perform with his engine room as he decides if Philippe Coutinho is the right man to start.
Matty Cash could come back into the side with Ashley Young potentially given a break, but centre-back Diego Carlos is not yet ready to return to action following his long lay-off because of a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Despite scoring four goals in his last three Villa starts, Danny Ings has been benched until after the 82nd minute in the last two games — suggesting Emery is not a huge fan of his abilities at the moment.
Wolves, who have had 24 hours more recovery time than their hosts, are likely to give a debut to new signing Matheus Cunha up front.
The on-loan arrival from Atletico Madrid will become a permanent Wolves player for a club-record £43million in the summer.
The Brazilian is likely to replace Diego Costa in the starting XI and Adama Traore, who been used as an impact substitute in the last three games and replaced Costa at half-time in Saturday’s defeat to United, could also earn a start against his former club.
The stats
Cunha has logged six goals and eight assists in 1,420 minutes of LaLiga playing time for Atletico across the past two seasons, giving him a rate of one goal involvement per 101 minutes of football.
Wolves have won four of their past six Premier League games against Aston Villa (D1 L1), one more than they had won in their previous 26 top-flight meetings with the Villans (W3 D9 L14).
Only Arsenal and Liverpool (12) and Newcastle (10) have taken more than the nine points that Villa have since Emery succeeded Steven Gerrard at Villa Park.
The former Villarreal boss has achieved the same number of wins (three) in four games as Gerrard did in the first 13 of Villa’s Premier League campaign.
In five previous clashes between teams managed by the two Spanish coaches, Lopetegui’s Sevilla won two and Emery’s Villarreal won one with each of the last two finishing as 1-1 draws.
Prediction
Villa’s performance against Spurs was close to perfect, but they should not be able to gain the upper hand in midfield as easily against Wolves’ Portuguese trio of Ruben Neves, Mateus Nunes and Joao Moutinho.
This clash could develop into a very tactical game where chances are few and far between, which will probably suit Villa because they have been much more clinical than Wolves — who have the lowest chance conversion rate in the Premier League.
Cunha’s arrival could change that in the long run, but it might be too much to expect the new signing to hit the ground running given he has only had a couple of days training with the group and his last competitive game was more than six weeks ago.
With more time to assess his squad than Lopetegui and possessing greater experience of the Premier League, Emery should give Villa enough of an edge to win a tight game by the smallest of margins.