Palace v Aston Villa

Selhurst Park, Sunday 3.45pm

Fans

Story so far

Aston Villa drew 1-1 against Manchester United in midweek which leaves them 7th in the Premier League.

They currently have one eye on the Carling Cup Final which takes place at the end of this month, so they may opt to rest a few of their star players.

Team news

Matt Lawrence and Claude Davis are battling to be fit for the near sell out game at Selhurst Park this Sunday.

Both defenders missed the midweek defeat against Swansea, and with Lee Hills being cup tied it could leave the Eagles very low on players to choose from.

Aston Villa duo Stiliyan Petrov (ankle) and Gabriel Agbonlahor (leg) are major injury doubts for the match.

Emile Heskey and Stephen Warnock are both back in training but boss Martin O'Neill may choose to leave them out to ensure they are fit for their Carling Cup final match at the end of the month.

Quotes

Roy Hodgson

Warnock told the South London Press: "We're ready to give them a run for their money - as long as we don't give them an early goal like we did to Swansea. If you do that with Villa you're dead. We need to be a little sharper at the back.

"The league is the bread and butter so the shackles are off on Sunday, we can go and enjoy it. We've got one or two players that can give them problems."

Martin O'Neill

"We're going to try and win the game. There might be a couple of enforced changes and I might make another couple as well.

"But overall we still want to compete in the competition. We have reached a Wembley final in one competition and we want to try and do what we can to do as well as possible in another."

Aston Villa - league stats

Position	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	Points
7th	25	11	9	5	42

Full league table

Last five results

Date	Type	Home Team	Score	Away Team
03/01/2005	League	Crystal Palace	2 - 0	Aston Villa
25/09/2004	League	Aston Villa	1 - 1	Crystal Palace
03/12/2003	League Cup	Aston Villa	3 - 0	Crystal Palace
14/03/1998	League	Aston Villa	3 - 1	Crystal Palace
08/11/1997	League	Crystal Palace	1 - 1	Aston Villa

All time results

Aston Villa's top scorer

Agbonlahor - 12 goals

Ref watch

Kevin Friend (Leicestershire)

Last meeting

Palace 2-0 Aston Villa

Monday January 03 2005

Palace: Kiraly, Butterfield (Boyce, 75), Powell, Hall, Granville, Routledge, Watson (Leigertwood, 66), Riihilahti, Hughes, Lakis, Johnson

Subs not used: Speroni, Freedman, Shipperley

Bookings: Granville, Hughes

Goals: Johnson 33, 66(pen)

Aston Villa: Sorensen, De la Cruz, Delaney, Ridgewell, Samuel, Solano, Hendrie (Luke Moore, 66), McCann, Davis, Barry, Angel

Subs not used: Postma, Berson, Whittingham, Stefan Moore

Bookings: De la Cruz, Luke Moore, McCann