Aston Villa at Hull Tigers: Updates, team news and links

People used to say that you didn't make money out of football club. Well, times have changed. These days you can make a lot of money out of a football club and the Hull City owner knows this.

Which is a reason why he wants to change the name to Hull Tigers. It's all about branding and it will happen and in a year or two they'll have forgotten about it, because someone somewhere will say 'but it's still our Hull' and it will all just be accepted as the way it is.

And that is all I'm going to write about the proposed name of our opponents today. There is money in it if they do it and ultimately that will be good for them. They don't like it, but supporters these days have little say.

The match

I wrote in my preview why we need to win this and I know Hull have a good record at home this season but they are beatable and I think we will win. Basically, we have to win.

It's a little like how Manchester United need to win today. It's one of those games.

And from 2pm we will have updates here and on Twitter including team news and links to interesting pages, so come and join us, but before that, courtesy of the BBC, we have some stats.

Thanks BBC

  • We have won the last eight meetings against Hull in all competitions, including all four Premier League fixtures. We've kept six successive clean sheets in this fixture.
  • Hull have not registered a point or league goal against us in five attempts since a 2-1 home win in August 1987 in the old Division Two.
  • We are hoping to register three successive league wins for the first time since April 2010.
  • Only Arsenal (nine points) and Liverpool (seven) have earned more away points than our six this season. We've taken 16 points from our last eight away games.
  • We have already won two matches this season from losing positions - the best record in the division.
  • Our tally of nine goals is bettered only by Manchester City (14) and Arsenal (13).
  • We average the lowest amount of possession in the Premier League this season (39.9%). Hull have the second lowest (42.7%).
  • Brad Guzan played 16 Championship matches on loan at Hull between January and April 2011.

Video of the day

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