Hull City v Aston Villa: Key stats and talking points

Promoted Hull City are vying to start a top-flight season with three straight wins for the first time. Opponents Aston Villa have never lost to a promoted side under Unai Emery but they are yet to muster a point, goal or shot on target this season. Hull moving fast on and off the pitch It has been a wild ride for Hull City's supporters since last year. From avoiding relegation to League One on goal difference to sneaking into the play-offs on the final day of the regular 2025-26 season and earning promotion with a stoppage-time winner, they are now sitting pretty in the Premier League with two wins from two and no goals conceded. It's a rise that has come at a breakneck pace under head coach Sergej Jakirovic, with the club's manic summer recruitment a reflection of that. Eighteen players have been signed, six of them coming on Tuesday's deadline day. This was a club under a transfer embargo when the Bosnian arrived. "It is my job now to find a good balance between new and old players," said Jakirovic, who could just as easily have been speaking for his counterpart Emery. Two games is a tiny sample but the reshaped team has so far retained the direct and aggressive style which brought them success last season. Happy to sit deep, press with intensity and play on the counter-attack, Hull move the ball upfield quicker and in fewer passes than any other side in the Premier League this season. [BBC] Villans in need of new heroes Three years and 10 months after he took charge at Aston Villa, this is finally Emery's squad. The club signed a player in every position this summer, with Emery at the fore in terms of identifying new recruits. Seven of the starting XI in May's Europa League final were players inherited by the Spaniard. Some of that side ultimately viewed winning the club's first major trophy for 30 years as a natural end to their Villa careers. Others were sold to meet financial regulations and release the club early from the stranglehold of a multi-year settlement agreement with Uefa, imposed after breaching the European governing body's spending rules. Emery admits the summer of upheaval, which included backroom staff, was far greater than planned. The players who have departed, either permanently or on loan, accounted for half of Villa's Premier League minutes in 2025-26, and 55% of their goals. [BBC] Crucially, Emery remains – and so, therefore, does optimism among the fanbase. That's despite Villa becoming the first team since QPR in 1977 to finish in the top four and then lose their opening two matches of the following season without scoring. They're in danger of becoming the first side on record not to register a shot on target after three Premier League games. Clearly, it will take time to see the best of this new iteration of Aston Villa – eight of the 11 new faces have yet to start – but they recovered from a start last season of one point from five games, and no goals after four. And Emery will not countenance the idea of a transitional season. "We must compete and win, rebuilding the team as fast as possible," he has asserted.