Aston Villa vs Man City Odds
| Aston Villa Odds | +375 |
| Man City Odds | -150 |
| Draw | +320 |
| Over / Under | 2.5 -175 / +135 |
Aston Villa and Manchester City meet for a huge top four clash at Villa Park on Wednesday.
Villa's good run of form was finally put to a halt at the Vitality Stadium on Sunday. Aston Villa needed a lost stoppage time goal to secure a 2-2 draw with the Cherries after being outplayed for large stretches of the match. Unai Emery's side hasn't really stepped up against the better competition this season getting trashed by Liverpool and Newcastle in their two biggest matches, so this will be a big test for them.
This is a really tough run of fixtures for Manchester City and they are falling behind in the title race after draws against Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham. Pep Guardiola has been hampered compared to years past because of injuries, but he's also been playing much more aggressive than we've seen in years past, which has led to some crazy score lines like the one we saw against Tottenham on Sunday. This is a match that will be much slower paced than their last three, so we'll see how much control they are able to have on the road.
Let's dive into Aston Villa vs Man City.
Aston Villa
Aston Villa are a very tactically diverse team and have shown ability to profile well in this types of situations. Typically, Emery wants his team to play out of the back and control possession, but sometimes the match calls for them to play without the ball and in transition, which they have been very successful at doing. Since Unai Emery has taken over, Aston Villa have played 16 matches where they have held under 50% possession. They are 9-1-6 in those matches.
The best two examples of this are their two matches against Brighton and Tottenham where Villa conceded a lot of possession and lost the expected goals battle, yet they were efficient and won the games.
The game plan is going to be very simple. Aston Villa are going to sit off stay in their narrow 4-4-2 shape, cut off the space in between the lines and dare Manchester City to beat them over the top, which without Doku and Grealish may actually work. Even though Aston Villa is passive, they are very good at preventing teams from getting into their penalty area, as they are allowing the fifth-fewest box entries this season.
A key here for Aston Villa is how effective they are in the wide areas. Their build up structure sends Lucas Digne high up the pitch and really focuses on getting the ball into wide area to create chances via crosses. Aston Villa have completed the third-most crosses into the penalty area, which will be big against Manchester City, who are going to try to dominate the center part of the pitch.
Man City
This is a really tough run of fixtures for Manchester City at the moment. Pep Guardiola’s side in their last four matches have had to play Chelsea, Liverpool, RB Leipzig and Tottenham. That’s incredibly draining even for a team like Manchester City that is used to playing top tier competition week in and week out. Now they have to travel to Villa park where to face an Aston Villa side that has won 13 straight matches at home in the Premier League.
They also are going to be without a bunch of key players because Rodri and Jack Grealish are suspended due to yellow card accumulation and Jeremy Doku picked up an injury against Tottenham. Rodri is the most important player on Manchester City by far and his loss in a match like this is massive.
This season, Rodri has 123 passes into the final third and 104 progressive passes. Next-closest is Kyle Walker with 66 in each of those categories. Plus, the options to replace Rodri are not a like for like swap. Pep could go with Rico Lewis, but then he loses ball stopping ability when Aston Villa counters. He could go with Kovacic, but he doesn’t have the passing ability and ball control of Rodri, so it’s a very interesting predicament for City.
Plus, not have a game changer down the wing like Doku or Grealish when City tries to overload the center part of the pitch, which gets those two into 1 v 1 situations is a killer, especially playing Aston Villa, who are going to stay very compact.
Aston Villa vs Man City
Prediction
This is a really bad spot once against for Manchester City, who have been playing nothing but huge match after huge match for a month straight. At some point that has to be incredibly draining on a team, even if they are the best team in the world.
The problem in this match for Manchester City is being able to overload and dominate the center part of the pitch without Rodri and with the outlet of Doku or Grealish in 1 v 1 situations when Aston Villa are in their narrow 4-4-2 shape out of possession. Outside of two matches against Liverpool and Newcastle, Aston Villa have been an incredibly stout defensive team, allowing only 1.05 xG per 90 minutes.
Given the home form that Aston Villa have been in and given the loss of key personnel for Manchester City, I think the Cityzens are overvalued here on the road. So, I like the value on Aston Villa +1 at -130.
