Ciaran Clark is relishing the prospect of a trip to Chelsea on New Year’s Eve despite Villa’s poor record against the rest of the Premier League’s top six.

The claret and blues have lost all of this season’s meetings with the other five members of the Premier League elite.

And that’s a statistic which makes the match at Stamford Bridge a daunting prospect for Villa fans.

But Clark, who has just broken back into the team, has fond memories of last season’s game there where his late goal secured a point for Villa in a thrilling 3-3 draw.

And even though the odds are stacked against Alex McLeish’s side the versatile 22-year-old believes Villa have the potential to take something from the game.

“That was a good day, but saying that we should have won the game,” he said.

“I know we were only minutes away from winning and I don’t know how we even managed to pull it back to a draw.

“It was brilliant, but I’m just hoping we can come away with three points this year,” added Clark.

“Our side’s good enough to beat anyone in this league. All the lads know that.

“We can do it. We’ve just got to stick together and hopefully we can go down there and hopefully keep a good defensive shape like we did at Stoke and then we can go forward and hopefully create chances.

“It would be great to end 2011 with a win.

“That’s what we’re looking to do and hopefully we’ll come away with the three points.”

Clark is happy to see his partnership with Stiliyan Petrov in the centre of midfield growing with each game.

And he is hopeful he will get a run in the side having impressed alongside the Villa skipper.

“We train every day together so we know what each other can do,” said Clark.

“We’re told just to sit and make sure we keep it compact and tight in there and I think we did that on the defensive side at Stoke,” he added.

“I think we could maybe work on going forward a bit more.

“But we got our defence sorted and that’s what we wanted to do.

“But at the moment I just want to keep playing, keep working hard and hopefully I can keep getting picked and being involved with the squad.”