AEK v Austria Wien background

AEK Athens made a positive start on matchday one and will look to make it three UEFA Europa League wins in a row as they welcome Austria Wien in Group D.

Previous meetings
• The sides are meeting for the first time.

• AEK's eight games against Austrian sides have ended W3 D1 L4 (W2 L2 at home).

• Austria Wien's five encounters with Greek clubs have ended W1 D1 L3 – they have lost both of their previous games in Greece.

Form guide
• Matchday one's 2-1 success at Rijeka was AEK's second straight UEFA win; prior to that, they had gone five European games without a goal (D2 L3).

• Austria Wien's 5-1 loss to AC Milan on matchday one was their worst ever home defeat in the UEFA Cup or UEFA Europa League and their joint heaviest in UEFA competition.

• Austria Wien have lost only one of their last nine European away fixtures: W6 D2 L1.

• Winners of Greece's end-of-season UEFA Champions League play-offs, AEK have had five previous UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League group stage campaigns, most recently in 2011/12. They have only once reached the round of 32, in 2007/08.

• Last season's Austrian Bundesliga runners-up, Austria Wien have not survived their last five UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League group stage campaigns since making it to the 2004/05 quarter-finals.

Links and trivia
• The journey from Vienna to Athens is around 1,300km.

• AEK midfielder Arnór Ingvi Traustason is on loan from Austria Wien's neighbours Rapid Wien, who he joined in 2016.

• AEK's Dmytro Chygrynskiy won the UEFA Cup as a Shakhtar Donetsk player in 2009.

The coaches
• Manolo Jiménez returned for a second spell as AEK coach in January 2017, having led the club to 2010/11 Greek Cup glory during his first stint. The former Sevilla left-back has also coached Sevilla, Real Zaragoza and al-Rayyan.

• Austria Wien coach since 2015, Thorsten Fink won the 2001 UEFA Champions League and several Bundesliga titles as a Bayern midfielder, and secured back-to-back Swiss championships as coach of Basel from 2009–11.