Two away wins in four days last week — 3-1 at Coventry City in the Carabao Cup on 16 September, then 3-2 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the league on the nineteenth — and suddenly Aston Villa have scored seven goals in eight days. Before 12 September the league rows carry not a single goal for them. That is this start in one sentence: a long wait, and then a week of riot.
Walk back to the beginning and you can feel how long the wait was. 23 August, away at Brighton & Hove Albion: 4-0 to them, the worst afternoon of the lot. 31 August, Arsenal at home: 0-1, one goal short and none of their own. 5 September, away at Hull City: 0-0, a point and silence. Three league games, no goals, one point, and a goal record of 0-5 before September had even found its feet.
Then came Nottingham Forest at home on 12 September and the seal finally broke: 1-2 to them, so the first league goal in the rows arrived with no points attached to it. But it arrived. One against Forest, three at Coventry, three at Tottenham: seven in eight days, after three weeks of nothing.
The cup night in between deserves its own line. Coventry City away at the Coventry Building Society Arena, 3-1 to Villa — the home-first scoreline in the file reads 1-3 and the goals were the visitors' — and the joint-widest winning margin in these rows, level with the 2-0 over Tottenham in May 2025 and the 4-2 over Liverpool in May 2026. Three goals away from home in a cup tie, four days after the first league goal of the season, is the strangest gear change in the whole file.
Then the league answer, and it was emphatic. 3-2 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 19 September: three more goals, the first league win of the season, and a result earned at the opponent's ground — an away day in north London that played like anything but. It means the last two away matches in the rows have both been wins, after the first away day on file ended 4-0 and the next, at Hull, 0-0.
The Villa–Tottenham thread is becoming a story in its own right. These records hold six meetings going back to February 2025 and an FA Cup tie at Villa Park, and Villa have won five of them: 2-1 at home in that cup tie, 2-0 at home in the league that May, 2-1 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in October 2025, 2-1 there again in the FA Cup in January 2026, and now this. The one defeat in the six came at home on 3 May 2026, 1-2. Three of the five wins have been at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which is a strange kind of home comfort.
It is also worth remembering how the previous campaign finished, because it finished loudly: 4-3 at home to Sunderland in April, then a 1-0 defeat at Fulham, then 1-2 at home to Tottenham, then 4-2 at home to Liverpool, then 2-1 away at Manchester City on the last day recorded. Three wins in the last five results of last season in these rows. The goals were there in May. They vanished in August and came back in September.
What the table says, plainly: five league games played, one won, one drawn, three lost. Four scored, nine against. Four points from fifteen. Sixteenth — and all four of those goals came in the last two league games.
What comes next is not in these data. The competition list for this club names the Premier League, the Champions League, the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup. All the file says for certain is that the wait ended on 12 September and the week that followed was worth it.
By the numbers — Premier League: 16th · 5 played · 1-1-3 · 4-9 · 4 pts · form LLDLW (oldest first). All data from ScoreCrowd's match records, retrieved 24 September 2026.