After their worst league start in 28 years and an early elimination from the EFL Cup, should Aston Villa be worried?
No wins and no goals. It’s been a terrible start to the 2025-26 Premier League season for Aston Villa, with just Wolverhampton Wanderers below them in the table after the opening four matchdays.
To compound their misery, they exited the EFL Cup on Tuesday following a penalty shootout defeat to Brentford in the third round, ruling out one opportunity for silverware this season.
So, what’s gone wrong for Unai Emery’s side in the early weeks of the new campaign? Why have the goals dried up, and is this a case of bad luck rather than poor performances? We break down their tricky start to 2025-26.
A Historically Bad Scoreless Run
This is Aston Villa’s 127th season in the English Football League system, but it’s the first in which they’ve failed to score a single goal in their opening four league matches.
Villa have become just the fifth team in Premier League history to fail to score a single goal across their opening four games of a season. They are still three games away from replicating Crystal Palace’s record-breaking start in 2017-18, however.
Worst Scoreless Runs at the Start of a Premier League Season
Back then, Palace failed to score in any of their opening seven games to the Premier League season. The first four of those came under the newly appointed Frank de Boer, but the Dutchman was sacked just 31 days after the season began.
His replacement, Roy Hodgson, couldn’t fix the issues in attack until his fourth game in charge, with Palace eventually ending their scoreless run in their eighth match of 2017-18, a 2-1 home win over Chelsea. Comically, their first goal of the league season was a César Azpilicueta own goal, too.
Once ounce of comfort for Villa is that every other team to have opened a Premier League season with a scoreless run of 4+ matches eventually recovered to finish in the top 11, with both Sheffield Wednesday and Newcastle securing a top-seven finish, which could even be enough to secure European football this season.
Is Villa’s Run Down to Misfortune?
Well, no, not really. Aston Villa’s attacking metrics are worryingly low compared to other clubs in the 2025-26 Premier League across the opening four matchdays.
Their expected goals (xG) total of 3.07 is the second lowest behind only bottom side Wolves (2.63), who have lost every game, while the quality of the attempts they are having are also the second lowest: only Wolves’ 0.075 xG per shot is lower than Villa’s 0.077.
Aston Villa No Goals in 2025-26
To put that into more basic terms, based on the quality of their shots according to Opta’s xG model, the average team would be expected to convert 7.7% of them into goals. Compare that to Manchester City’s 0.169, or an expected conversion rate of 16.9%, then you can see the issue with Villa’s average shot selection and chance creation.
Last season, Villa’s average xG per shot was 0.11 from non-penalty chances, the eighth highest and level with Arsenal.
Based on Opta’s expected points model, we can get a better sense of which teams may have overachieved or underperformed relative to the chances they created and conceded. The model simulates the number of goals scored in each match using the xG value of every shot. It then simulates the outcome (win/draw/loss) 10,000 times per match. Each team’s expected points are calculated based on how often they win, draw, or lose across those simulations.
It’s not an exact science, as expected goals data doesn’t include a lot of factors, such as game state and dangerous periods of possession that don’t lead to shots. Nevertheless, it’s still a decent barometer for how teams performed over the opening four matchdays of this season.
Aston Villa are second from bottom of that table, just like in the real-life Premier League standings, above only Wolves. If anything, Wolves could be closer to Aston Villa based on their performances (2.0 expected points), with Aston Villa’s expected points total of 2.1 only marginally above their real tally of two points from four games.
Expected Points Premier League 2025-26
Can Unai Emery Turn It Around?
There’s little doubt Unai Emery’s spell at Aston Villa has been impressive overall.
Before a ball was kicked in 2025-26, Emery had averaged 1.81 points per game as manager of Villa in the Premier League. Of 72 managers to have taken charge of at least 100 games in the competition at a single club, just 12 have posted better points-per-game averages than Emery during his spell at Villa, and eight of those 12 won a league title at that club.
He led his side to the UEFA Champions League for the first time ever with a fourth-place finish in 2023-24 and managed to take the club to the quarter-finals of the UCL last season, losing to eventual winners Paris Saint-Germain, as well as reaching an FA Cup semi-final, again losing to eventual winners Crystal Palace.
Failure to qualify for the Champions League last season, though, meant restrictions had to be put in place for the Villans during this year’s summer transfer window to comply with the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) – regulations Emery has been openly critical of.
The signing of striker Evann Guessand from Nice for £26 million was their only big-money summer transfer, with the Ivory Coast international brought in to try take some of the goalscoring pressure off Ollie Watkins. Guessand has only played 105 Premier League minutes and contributed one shot.
The lack of recruitment, coupled with the loss of January loanees Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio, has reduced the depth of quality in attacking positions for Emery.
Harvey Elliott provides a lot of promise and scored his first goal for his new club in the EFL Cup game against Brentford on Tuesday, while Jadon Sancho also joined on loan from Manchester United after flattering to deceive across four seasons in England since moving from Borussia Dortmund.
Even if his starting XI choices didn’t work out last season, Emery had the ability to change games with his great use of substitutions. Only Brighton (19) scored more goals from their substitutes across all competitions in 2024-25 than Villa (18), while their total of 27 goal involvements from subs was bettered by only Brighton and Tottenham (32) across all comps.
There’s not been a huge shift in style from Emery, either. If anything, Aston Villa have been more intense than last season out of possession, with a lower PPDA than 2024-25 (11.8 versus 13.1 last season) and as many high turnovers per game (6.2 in both seasons), while their possession start distance is almost identical (40.8m from the their goal line this season, 40.5 last).
Some of that might be due to them chasing games this season, though. Villa are one of only two sides – again, along with Wolves – yet to hold a lead for a single minute in the Premier League after four matchdays of 2025-26.
Premier League Game State in 2025-26
Light at the End of the Tunnel?
Looking at positives for Emery, the next three games offer a decent chance of turning around their fortunes.
Fixtures against Sunderland (A), Fulham (H) and Burnley (H) are deemed the easiest of any Premier League club between now and the October international break, based on the Opta Power Rankings.
Premier League Fixture Difficulty September to October 2025
Those three opponents have an average Opta Power Rating of 86.2, which makes Villa’s fixtures appear slightly easier than both Nottingham Forest and Tottenham across the next three matchdays.
That isn’t only positive for Villa and their inability to find the net in 2025-26, but it also gives their all-time Premier League top scorer Watkins a chance to end his own run of misfortune.
He’s now without a goal in six consecutive Premier League appearances, which is his worst run of form in the competition since last August (eight games). In fact, Watkins has scored just once in his last nine Premier League appearances for Villa, adding only one assist in this time as well.
Already their worst league start since 1997-98, when they won no points from their opening four games but went on to win their fifth, if they were to lose at Sunderland this weekend it’ll be their lowest points tally after five games of a top-flight season since 1964-65 (one point).
Panic hasn’t set in yet and Emery has earned the right to battle on, but a poor return from the next three games before the October international break might dial up the pressure at Villa Park.
Premier League Stats Opta
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