By IANS
London : Former English Premier League champions Chelsea will be dreading their Sunday visit to Villa Park. The last time Chelsea beat Aston Villa at home was Mar 21, 1999 when a goal from Bjarne Goldbaek and two from Tore Andre Flo helped the visitors to a 3-0 win.
Since then Chelsea have travelled to Villa Park and failed to win on nine occasions, eight in the Premier League and once a Carling Cup quarter-final in December 2003 when Juan Pablo Angel and Gavin McCann scored in a 2-1 win for Villa; Joe Cole scored for Chelsea.
Aston Villa were the first team against whom Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho dropped his first point in the 2005-06 season. Villa’s Luke Moore scored both home and away against Chelsea, with the goal at Stamford Bridge the first the London side conceded that season in the Premiership.
Sunderland manager Roy Keane, on the other hand, returns to Old Trafford to something of an old boys’ reunion Saturday evening. Keane made 480 appearances, scoring 51 goals between 1993 and 2005 in his remarkable career as a Manchester United player and captain.
There will also be his former team-mates at Old Trafford, Dwight Yorke, Andrew Cole and Keiron Richardson, who all now play for Sunderland, although Richardson came off injured Saturday and might be in doubt.
Raymond van der Gouw, a former first-team goalkeeper at United, is now first-team goalkeeping coach at Sunderland, and Neil Bailey, a former Academy coach at United, is first-team coach.
Mick Brown, who was assistant manager to ‘Big’ Ron Atkinson at United is Keane’s chief scout and Michael Clegg, who made nine appearances as right back for United before moving to Oldham in 2002, is the Sunderland strength and conditioning coach.
His father, Michael Clegg Sr, is the strength and conditioning coach at United, a rare family head-to-head.
Paul McShane in the centre of Sunderland’s defence started his professional career at United. Danny Higginbotham, who signed for Sunderland from Southampton Wednesday, made five appearances for United in all competitions.
Last weekend a landmark goal was scored at the Stadium of Light. Liverpool scored their 7,000th league goal, a long journey since Malcolm McVean scored the club’s first ever league goal against Middlesbrough Ironopolis Sep 2, 1893.
Manchester United (7,098) and Wolverhampton (7,085) are ahead of Liverpool and the next team who could reach 7,000 is Aston Villa, who after their 2-1 win over Fulham at the weekend, currently have 6,961 league goals to their name.
Liverpool’s Abel Xavier is only one of five players to have figured in England, Spain, Italy and Germany, the top four football leagues in Europe.
Xavier has played for Hannover, Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Everton, Real Oviedo and Bari, while the other four are Florin Raducioiu (AC Milan, Brescia, West Ham United, Espanyol and Stuttgart) Gica Popescu (Lecce, Tottenham, Barcelona and Hannover) and Pierre Wome (Roma, Brescia, Inter, Fulham, Espanyol and Werder Bremen).