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Get all the latest football news, highlights and analysis delivered straight to your inbox with Fox Sports Sportmail. Sign up now!!!<\/a><\/p>\n Here, AFP Sport looks at three talking points ahead of the festive action.<\/p>\n ROGER SPEARHEADS VILLA CHARGE<\/p>\n Unai Emery\u2019s third-placed Villa are still considered rank outsiders for the Premier League title even though they are just three points behind leaders Arsenal.<\/p>\n Villa\u2019s 2-1 home win against Manchester United was their 10th consecutive victory in all competitions \u2014 the first time they have achieved the feat as a top-flight team since 1914.<\/p>\n One of the major reasons for their recent success is the form of England midfielder Morgan Rogers, who failed to register a single goal involvement in his first seven matches in all competitions.<\/p>\n Now it is a different story: he has recorded 11 goal involvements in his past 15 appearances and the quality of his goals has been striking.<\/p>\n Rogers\u2019 seven Premier League goals this season have come from just 2.86 expected goals \u2014 a metric used to determine how likely a player is to convert a chance.<\/p>\n But football analysts Opta give Villa just a five per cent chance of becoming English champions for the first time since 1981.<\/p>\n Emery\u2019s men have an opportunity to silence the doubters when they take on fourth-placed Chelsea, with a match at Arsenal to follow just days later.<\/p>\n Morgan Rogers has been in sensational from for Aston Villa.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n SLOT\u2019S LIVERPOOL GOALS HEADACHE <\/p>\n In the early weeks of the season, Arne Slot would probably have envisaged Mohamed Salah and Alexander Isak as two of his first-choice attackers.<\/p>\n Now the Liverpool boss has neither \u2014 Salah is with Egypt at the Africa Cup of Nations<\/a>, while Isak faces at least two months on the sidelines after fracturing his leg against Tottenham<\/a>.<\/p>\n Slot has steadied the ship at Anfield after a shocking run of six defeats in seven Premier League matches that left Liverpool\u2019s title defence in tatters.<\/p>\n A run of three wins and two draws in five league games has lifted the reigning champions into fifth spot, but there will be concerns over where the goals are going to come from ahead of the visit of bottom club Wolves.<\/p>\n Isak\u2019s absence will heap more pressure on the shoulders of top-scorer Hugo Ekitike.<\/p>\n The summer signing has netted eight times in the Premier League \u2014 twice the tallies of Salah and Cody Gakpo.<\/p>\n Hugo Ekitike scores for Liverpool under pressure from Tottenham\u2019s Christian Romero.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n FERNANDES BLOW FOR MAN UNITED <\/p>\n Bruno Fernandes has been a shining light and virtually ever-present during Manchester United\u2019s recent lean years.<\/p>\n But manager Ruben Amorim is going to have to plan for a period without his talisman after the Portugal midfielder pulled up with an apparent hamstring injury in United\u2019s 2-1 defeat at Villa Park.<\/p>\n While the prognosis is unclear, Amorim has already ruled Fernandes out of United\u2019s clash against Newcastle at Old Trafford on Friday (Saturday AEDT), among a list of absentees, with the Portuguese boss urging the rest of his squad to \u201cstep up\u201d in the absence of his \u201cimpossible to replace\u201d captain.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s massive,\u201d defender Diogo Dalot told Sky Sports. \u201cWe don\u2019t know how bad it is but for him to come off (in) the game, we know how tough he is.\u201d Playmaker Fernandes has five goals and seven assists in the Premier League this season for inconsistent United, who are also without top-scorer Bryan Mbeumo, on Africa Cup of Nations duty with Cameroon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Villa face a tough challenge at Chelsea on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) after muscling their way into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[12033,201124,53035,6236,64,63,689,201128,62966,1753,201127,1208,22694,2057,596,201135,6246,201133,201130,201125,67623,67609,1613,2022,6255,48081,673,3583,677,63855,201123,1614,1532,201132,2643,85,201131,201134,201129,38445,3586,201126],"class_list":["post-371835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-alexander-isak","tag-apparent-hamstring-injury","tag-arsenal-football-club","tag-aston-villa-football-club","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-bizarre-goals-problem","tag-bruno-fernandes","tag-bryan-mbeumo","tag-christian-romero","tag-england","tag-english-champions","tag-europe","tag-football","tag-football-analysts","tag-football-news","tag-games-preview","tag-goal-involvements","tag-goals-headache","tag-home-win","tag-league-games","tag-liverpool","tag-london","tag-manchester-united-football-club","tag-mohamed-salah","tag-new-south-wales","tag-northern-europe","tag-oceania","tag-opta","tag-outsiders-stun","tag-premier-league","tag-ruben-amorim","tag-single-goal-involvement","tag-sky-sports","tag-sports","tag-startling-problem","tag-striker-crisis","tag-summer-signing","tag-title-defence","tag-united-kingdom","tag-villa-charge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}