WHO ARE ASTON VILLA?

Lincoln City and Aston Villa have found themselves linked together in recent years thanks to the efforts of John Deehan. The man who claimed he had a huge list of contacts (as long as those contacts were at Forest and Villa) brought Paul Green to our club from Aston Villa, arranged a behind-closed-doors friendly against the Premiership side and mentioning his time at Aston Villa as many times as was humanly possible.

However, this friendly came about thanks to the friendship between Peter Jackson and Martin O'Neill. At the recent "Jacko Evening" it was revealed the two have been friends for many years, also including a rather amusing story about O'Neill and the Yorkshire Ripper. It's certainly a far cry to a few years back when we used to only have home friendlies against Port Vale and Rotherham.

It will be the first chance that the fans will have the chance to see the new look Imps and the first official friendly that the Imps will have played following the postponement of the friendly at Harrogate Town. City did beat a team at the Catterick Garrison Army Camp by a whopping 14-0 scoreline, Dany N'Guessan scoring four of those.

The pressure is certainly on N'Guessan this coming season, it's about time he performend on a consistant basis, but he's certainly not the only player who we can say that about.

All the new signings are likely to feature at one point or another. Stefan Oakes, Rob Burch, Frank Sinclair, David Graham, Aaron Brown and Janos Kovacs have all joined the Imps during the summer months, it'll certainly be interesting to see how they settle into a side that conceded 90 goals in 50 games last season.

The Imps are likely to start the game with Rob Burch in goal, trialist Stuart Giddings at left back with Kovacs and Sinclair in the centre of defence. Paul Green will more than likely start against his former employers to complete the defence. The midfield will probably consist of Dany N'Guessan, Stefan Oakes, Lee Frecklington and Scott Kerr, whilst David Graham and Ben Wright are the likely duo up front.

Aston Villa will hopefully be fielding a strong side. They enter the Intertoto Cup at the weekend and will certainly want their talented group of players fit and ready for their stepping stone into Europe. They hope they will also be going into a successful season on the pitch, dislodging Liverpool from fourth spot and entering the qualification for the "Champions (plus the rest) League"

Hopefully, City fans will see Gabriel Agbonlahor, Gareth Barry (it'll certainly be interesting to see what reaction he gets from the Villa fans), Ashley Young and the many other world class players that Aston Villa have.

This will be City's first pre-season game against a Premiership side since Manchester City drew 2-2 at Sincil Bank in 2003. Before anyone questions that, the Liverpool friendly was played after the season had started.

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