Aston Villa manager Unai Emery is set to face his former club Arsenal, a fixture laden with narrative given his challenging 18-month tenure at the North London club that concluded in 2019. The upcoming match has stirred significant commentary, particularly from BBC Sport football expert Chris Sutton.

Sutton expressed a strong desire to see Emery's Aston Villa triumph over Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium. He passionately stated, "After the abuse he took from Arsenal fans, I'd love nothing more than Emery to go back to the Emirates and win." Sutton criticized some Arsenal fans for their past treatment of Emery, asserting that he "absolutely didn't deserve that" and that those fans "should take a long, hard look at themselves for the way they mocked him." He concluded, "I hope Villa go there and spank them, just because of that."

This match is part of Chris Sutton's ongoing prediction series for the Premier League season, where he forecasts the outcomes of all 380 games. His predictions are pitted against those of an AI, BBC Sport readers, and a variety of guest predictors. For Week 19, which spans the final games of 2025 on Tuesday, December 30, and the initial matches of 2026 on New Year's Day, Sutton is joined by singer-songwriter Tom A Smith.

Tom A Smith, a devoted Sunderland fan, also contributes his predictions for the week. Smith recently released his EP, "Say What You Want," which achieved success by reaching number 14 in the UK record store charts at the end of November. Readers are encouraged to submit their own predictions and compare them with Sutton's, Smith's, and the most popular community scores, which are used in the public leaderboards. The scoring system awards 10 points for correctly predicting a win, draw, or defeat, while an exact score prediction earns 40 points.