Villans To Conquer The Toon Army

Aston Villa is superior to Newcastle so the Villans are the best value side on Saturday’s English Premier League card at odds of 2.25 with Coral to beat the Magpies at Villa Park.

There is little doubt that Aston Villa is going places under Paul Lambert’s savvy stewardship and it is misleading that the Villans are one place below Newcastle on the English Premier League ladder. That has everything to do with the draw for the first three rounds of the competition and nothing to do with the quality of the performances.

Aston Villa beat Arsenal 3-1 away before being unlucky not to draw with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and going down 0-1 at home to a Liverpool team that is shaping as one of the term’s big improvers. Newcastle crashed to a 0-4 loss at Manchester City before back-to-back home matches in which the Magpies drew 0-0 with West Ham and took 86 minutes to get ahead of Fulham, eventually winning by a 1-0 margin.

Coral’s offer of 2.25 about implies that it thinks that Aston Villa is inferior to Newcastle. Not many people would agree with that assessment based on the first month of the new season so get stuck into Aston Villa at quite generous odds. Aston Villa really ought to be no bigger than 2.10.

Dropping down into England’s Football League and there are several sides that are trading at attractive odds in view of their assignments. The team that catches the eye most of all is English League One side Bristol City, which is available at odds of 2.90 to beat Peterborough at Ashton Gate. Bristol City is hovering just above the English League One drop zone following its relegation from the English Championship last term but the Robins have had a tough introduction to the third tier of English football and its 20th position is false. In comparison, Peterborough’s early English League One fixtures have been relatively easy. Bristol City beat Peterborough home and away in the English Championship last season and the Robins are trading at silly prices to defeat the Posh in front of their vociferous supporters.

Most bookmakers are still refusing to buy into Leyton Orient being the real deal, hence why one can back the English League One frontrunner at the tasty odds of 1.80 with Bet365 to beat Port Vale. Leyton Orient’s defeated last term’s English League Two champion Gillingham 3-1 on the road last time out. Port Vale was no match for Gillingham last season and its early results can be explained quite simply: good against bad teams and bad against good teams. Leyton Orient will stay the distance and, sooner or later, bookmakers will stop opposing it.

Preston North End is another English League One side with an unbeaten record in the competition and it should be shorter than odds of 1.91 with Coral to make it three wins on the spin with a home victory over Stevenage. Apart from taking Everton to extra time in the English Capital One Cup second round, Stevenage has played poorly since the season began, winning only one of its six third-tier games and scoring only two goals in the most recent five of them.

Finally in England, Nottingham Forest and Watford are two of the English Championship class acts and they are too big at odds of 1.62 and 1.73 respectively for their next matches, with Coral offering both prices. Nottingham Forest did not lose any admirers in its 1-2 loss at Wigan and the Tricky Trees, on lines through the Latics and Blackburn, are much stronger than Barnsley. Like Nottingham Forest, Watford is going to be in the thick of the promotion race and it will welcome dropping to grade, which is how it will feel for the Hornets to play against mediocre Charlton at Vicarage Road.

Not many sides appeal on the European continent, although Barcelona does look like a rock-solid odds-on shot versus Sevilla at Camp Nou. Sevilla lost 1-3 at home to Spain’s third strongest team, Atletico Madrid, so Paddy Power’s odds of 1.20 about Barcelona winning its 17th consecutive Spanish La Liga home game look worth including in multiple wagers.