Aston Villa headed into their Premier League meeting with Hull City on Saturday still hunting for their first goal of the campaign. According to Sports Mole, Unai Emery’s squad had failed to produce a single shot on target across their opening two fixtures, a run they urgently needed to end at the MKM Stadium.
The statistics surrounding the drought are stark. No top-flight side since the 2003-04 season has begun a campaign with three consecutive matches without scoring or testing the opposing goalkeeper. Villa also went through their first three league outings of 2025-26 without finding the net, and repeating that sequence would place them alongside Ipswich Town, who hold the only historical precedent for such a start in back-to-back seasons between 1969 and 1971.
Emery moved to reshape his options before the summer window closed on 1 September, bringing in Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Ibrahim Mbaye on deadline day. With the transfer market now shut until January 2027, the manager must rely on the current group to solve the attacking issues quickly.
The need for points is pressing after a difficult opening fortnight. A heavy 4-0 loss at Brighton & Hove Albion on the first weekend was followed by a narrow 1-0 defeat to Arsenal on Monday, leaving the team with nothing to show for two performances that offered contrasting levels of promise.
Their hosts arrived in the fixture brimming with confidence. Hull, described by Sports Mole as the division’s surprise package, had already beaten Coventry and then accounted for Manchester United to sit on six points. Only Bolton Wanderers in 2001-02 had previously managed three straight victories at the start of a Premier League season as a newly promoted club.
For a Villa side that secured a top-four finish last term, the inability to score carries extra weight. The publication noted that Arsenal, back in 1953-54, remain the only previous top-four finishers to go goalless across their opening three matches of the following campaign. Hull, meanwhile, also won the most recent Premier League encounter between the clubs, a 2-0 success in February 2015.
