Next Saturday, 17th of January 2015, a motivated Liverpool will travel to Birmingham to go head-to-head with Aston Villa at Villa Park for round 22 of the English Premier League, on a match that the Reds want to win in order to close the point gap to the top five of the table and to secure the third win a row for the first time this season.

After a somehow complicated win at Kingsmeadow against AFC Wimbledon last week for the FA Cup, Liverpool had again to dig deep in order to secure the three points from their visit to Sunderland on Saturday. The Reds were by far the best team in the match and secured a well deserved win thanks to an early goal from the Serbian international Lazar Markovic on the early moments of the match after an assist from Borini. The versatile Italian forward had his first real opportunity to shine and at the same time he relegated both his fellow countryman Mario Balotelli and the experienced English forward Rickie Lambert to the bench. Borini had a good match and contributed with an assist, but he was substituted by the erratic Balotelli on the 67’ minute.

Liverpool are enjoying a very positive moment as they are on a seven match row without a single defeat. The last time the Red’s were defeated was back on the busy month of December against an utterly inspired Manchester United at Old Trafford. Brendan Rodgers tactical changes are having an huge impact on the team’s overall performances and if they continue to improve, they might well find some space for them among the top five at the English Premier League table.

As for Aston Villa, they have been baffled by inconsistency so far this season and currently they occupy the 13th place of the EPL table just three points above Hull City, who are the first team below the relegation line. After a narrow home win over Blackpool for the FA Cup last week Aston Villa failed to win again this weekend as they sucumbed at the hands of Leicester at the King Power Stadium. Things haven’t been easy for Paul Lambert so far this season and although it is fair to say that the team has shown slight improvements since the departure of the former assistant manager Roy Keane, they are still far from the achieving the needed consistency to secure a place at the English top tier next season.

Given both sides’ recent performances, it is fair to say that Liverpool are firm favourites to win the match, but will certainly not be a joyful walk in the Park.

Aston Villa

Stats: W-1 L-2 D-2

Recent Form - LWDDL

Liverpool

Stats: W-4 L-0 D-1

Recent Form - WWDWW

Possible Line-ups

Aston Villa (4-3-3) – Guzan - Senderos - Cissokho - Okore - Hutton - Westwood - Cleverley - Delph - Weimann - Agbonlahor - Benteke

Liverpool (3-4-3) – Mignolet - Sahko - Skrtel - Can - Lucas Leiva - Henderson - Markovic - Gerrard - Moreno - Sterling - Coutinho

Prediction

Aston Villa 0 Liverpool 1