Unai Emery will hope to reach the FA Cup quarter-finals on Friday. We look ahead to the fifth-round clash with our Aston Villa vs Cardiff prediction and preview.
Aston Villa vs Cardiff Stats: The Key Insights
The Opta supercomputer struggled to look past the home side, with Aston Villa winning a massive 83.5% of pre-match simulations. Cardiff are winless in their last 15 meetings with Villa across all competitions, losing the last seven in a row. Morgan Rogers has had a hand in three of Villa’s four FA Cup goals in 2024-25 (2 goals, 1 assist), scoring in both matches.Aston Villa will hope to avoid a potential upset against Cardiff City when Unai Emery’s side feature in the FA Cup fifth round for the first time in 10 years.
Emery’s side had not reached the last 16 of this competition since the 2014-15 campaign but goals from Jacob Ramsey and Morgan Rogers secured a 2-1 fourth-round win over Tottenham to send them through this campaign.
Villa, then managed by Tim Sherwood, knocked out Leicester City the last season they reached the fifth round in this competition before eventually falling to a 4-0 defeat in the 2014-15 final against Arsenal.
The Premier League side are armed with a cup expert, too – Emery boasts four Europa League titles, and two crowns in each of the Coupe de France and Coupe de la Ligue.
He will expect to progress further on Friday night, with the draw wide open after Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs were all eliminated, and Villa’s squad well-equipped with a wealth of talent after the January arrivals of Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio.
Rogers has become one of Emery’s reliable stars as well, and he has had a hand in three of Villa’s four FA Cup goals in 2024-25 (2 goals, 1 assist), scoring in both matches against West Ham and Spurs. The England international has also made the most dribbles of any Villa player (6), while he has the second-most chances created (4) and shots attempted (5) this campaign.
He heads into Friday’s clash after scoring an equaliser against Crystal Palace in the Premier League on Tuesday, though Villa collapsed to a humbling 4-1 defeat at Selhurst Park that left them 10th in the table.
Cardiff, meanwhile, are playing at this stage of the FA Cup for the first time since 2013-14. However, they’ve suffered a fifth-round elimination in nine of their 11 previous such ties.
That being said, the two times that they went beyond this stage, they then reached the final (1926-27 and 2007-08).
Bluebirds boss Omer Riza will just be focused on setting his side up for a daunting task at Villa Park first. Their record against sides above them has been poor, perhaps as expected, in this competition. When not playing in the top flight, Cardiff have been eliminated from their last eight FA Cup ties against Premier League opponents.
Cardiff’s last such Premier League victory was away at Middlesbrough in the 2007-08 quarter-final, winning 2-0 before going all the way to lose the final 1-0 against Portsmouth after Nwankwo Kanu’s winner.
Riza could be forgiven for having his attention elsewhere heading into Friday night, however. His side are 19th in the Championship and six points clear of the relegation zone after Tuesday’s crucial 1-0 win over fellow strugglers Hull City.
Callum Robinson‘s deflected second-half volley proved the difference against the Tigers. Cardiff were without goalkeeper Jak Alnwick, Jesper Daland, Ollie Tanner, David Turnbull and the suspended Dimitrios Goutas for that win.
Aston Villa vs Cardiff Head-to-Head
These two sides have met three times previously in the FA Cup, albeit a fair while ago. Cardiff have progressed twice (third round in 1926-27, fourth round in 1948-49), with Villa winning the other (third round in 1928-29).
Emery will fancy his chances here given Villa are unbeaten in their last 15 home games against Cardiff (W13 D2), winning the last seven in a row.
Villa were 1-0 victors the last time these two sides met in competitive action, with Jack Grealish – now of Manchester City – scoring the only goal in April 2018 before Dean Smith’s side went on to win the Championship play-offs.
You have to go all the way back to December 1954 for Cardiff’s last win at Villa Park, though Riza will hope to write a new chapter here.
Aston Villa vs Cardiff Prediction
It will come as no surprise that Villa are the heavy favourites for this clash, winning 83.5% of 10,000 pre-match simulations by the Opta supercomputer.
Cardiff have just a 6.1% chance of victory in the same data-led sims, with the draw – which would send the tie to extra-time and potentially penalties – ranked at 10.3%.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
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Aston Villa vs Cardiff Prediction: FA Cup Fifth Round Opta Analyst.
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