Aston Villa v Wolves: Betting Preview & Tips

Aston Villa v Wolves

The games are coming thick and fast for Aston Villa at present but they look a lot better equipped to cope with it than they were last season. Betfair’s Jaymes Monte reports…

Aston Villa’s season fell apart after a draw against Stoke in early March last year; it took them eight league games before they recorded another victory. There were murmurings in the media of a repeat scenario after the goalless draw at The Britannia Stadium on Saturday, but any uneasiness that Villa fans might have been feeling were quashed within three days as they took maximum points from Wigan on Tuesday night. Villa now have back to back home fixtures in the space of five days when they will catch up on the games in hand that they have over their fellow fourth place challengers.

Both of them look to be fairly straightforward affairs on paper, Sunderland, who haven’t won away from home since the opening day of the season, will visit on Wednesday, following this Saturday’s game against relegation threatened Wolves.

Villa are available to back at odds of 1.45 and that looks about right, aside from Tottenham, Wolves haven’t caused any of the big sides too much trouble away from Molineux. They did however manage to take a point from Villa at home earlier in the season when a late Sylvan Ebanks-Blake penalty cancelled out Gabriel Agbonlahor’s earlier strike, a repeat of that score line is available to back at 10.0 in the correct score market whilst the less specific draw is a 4.6 chance.

Wolves will be relying on keeping it tight if they are to take anything from the game, their downfall this season has been a lack of goal scoring prowess, a point exemplified by the fact that no team in the league has scored fewer. That means we would be looking mostly towards Villa in order to confidently back more than 2.5 goals at 2.04, however, I feel that their season is very much getting to the point where they are keen to do no more than what is necessary. There is little incentive to go out and exert maximum effort in order to win by three, four or five goals; instead they will be looking to reserve as much energy as possible as the games come thick and fast for them. A narrow home win would suit just nicely.

So Under 2.5 goals at 1.96 looks the play here as well as the 1-0 and 2-0 score lines which are both trading at 7.2. James Milner has been the danger man for Martin O’Neill’s side in recent weeks as he attempts to nail down his place on the England team’s plane to South Africa in the summer, he’s been chipping in with a few important goals and is the side’s penalty taker if John Carew is not around. He is available to back at 8.5 to score the first goal and 3.0 to score at anytime, both of which look decent bets.

Villa can’t and won’t treat it as such, but this looks like a comfortable win for the home side. The three points would put them level, at least temporarily, with Spurs in fourth place, a position which they can now be backed at 4.3 to finish the season in.

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