Ending the year on a high? Arsenal v Aston Villa preview and team news

Villa take on Premier League leaders Arsenal in their last match of 2025

Arsenal being Arsenal, Aston Villa’s visit to the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday evening has taken on a narrative life of its own. It’s mostly lukewarm bullshit from people who spend too much time on the internet, but it’s there.

Villa are three points behind the Gunners at the top of the Premier League and outsiders everywhere are trying to talk up their place in the title race in a quite tedious debate that’s actually very simple.

If the title race is happening in December, Villa are in it by definition. But it’s not. Villa are competitive, in blistering form and nicely positioned, but any title talk within the club would be premature even if the rest of us can have a bit of fun with it while it lasts.

Unai Emery is handling Villa’s ludicrous form beautifully. He’s not interested in the title race until 34 games have been played and rightly so, but his results are making it inevitable that he’ll be asked about it for as long as Villa stay near the top.

Arsenal’s most online supporters – “every Gen Z illiterate”, in the words of Stan Collymore – are enraged that Emery has the temerity to want to win football matches, which he did when these teams met at the start of the month.

The idea that Villa wanted to beat Arsenal specifically is a pathetic illustration of football discourse in 2025.