FA Cup finalists Aston Villa play host to an improving Everton side in Birmingham on Saturday, as the Villains look to pick up valuable points in their ongoing battle against the drop.

After a positive start to the season, things went sour for Villa and thier awful form led to the sacking of Paul Lambert in early February. Tim Sherwood was the man chosen to replace Lambert and he has done a solid job in terms of turning Villa around. He's got them scoring again, led them out of the bottom three and will lead them out in their first FA Cup Final in 15 years later this month, after beating Liverpool 2-1 at Wembley two weeks ago.

Recent form hasn't been so kind to Villa and they've won just one of their past five games, a Christian Benteke header away at Tottenham handing them an impressive three points. The recent losses won't really concern Villa fans as they've played some good teams, meaning they can go into Saturday's match full of confidence.

After last season's excellent showing, Everton have suffere a major dip over the past 12 months. In the bottom half for much of the season, it is the Europa League which has been blamed for the Toffees poor form. This is probably a fair statement, especially given how their results have improved since being knocked out of the competition.

They've been excellent recently and are the inform team in the Barclays Premier League, having taken 16 points from their last possible 18. This run culminated in possibly their best performance of the season last week, goals from John Stones, Kevin Mirallas and James McCarthy seeing them brush Manchester United aside 3-0 at Goodison Park.

Team news:

Gabriel Agbonlahor won't recover from his hamstring in time to make the fixture, the same injury which kept the striker out of the FA Cup Semi Final win over Liverpool. Ciaran Clark and Nathan Baker both remain sidelined with knee injuries, whilst Alan Hutton could return to the squad after overcoming an ankle problem.

For the visitors, Steven Pienaar's injury woes continue as he once again is ruled out due toa muscle injury. Darron Gibson is also unavailable thanks to a metatarsal injury, similar to the one teammate Bryan Ovideo suffered in training this week, ruling the Costa Rican out for the remainder of the season.

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