Aston Villa vs Liverpool – Betting Tips, Player To Watch, Form Guide & More…

Premier League football returns this weekend after the two week international break and Liverpool take on relegation-threatened Aston Villa at Villa Park on Sunday lunchtime.

Preview

Villa are fighting for their lives at the wrong end of the table and fell into the drop zone after seeing Wigan beat Norwich 1-0 on Saturday afternoon, so manager Paul Lambert will be keen to use his game in hand to pull clear of the bottom three.

Liverpool on the other hand are in a battle with Mersey rivals Everton with sixth place realistically the best they can hope for this season. The Reds saw their slim hopes of finishing in the top-four ended with defeat to Southampton before the international break and they now sit seventh in the table and six points behind the Toffees, so victory today is vital if Brendan Rodgers men want to claim the bragging rights over their City rivals.

Previous meetings

Aston Villa ran out shock 3-1 winners in the reverse fixture at Anfield back in December and they would do almost anything for a repeat result today. Christian Benteke was unplayable in that game and he could be the key man again this time around.

Villa also have a decent recent record against the Reds, winning two of the previous four, so should go into the game confident of picking up a positive result.

League form guide

Despite sitting in the bottom three, Villa are actually in good form of late and head into the game off the back of successive wins over QPR and Reading. In fact, they current sit 7th in the form guide table having taken 10 points from 18 over the last six games, with their two defeats coming at the hands of Arsenal and Manchester City.

Liverpool have also taken 10 points from their last six games but saw a run of three wins on the bounce ended when they lost 3-2 to Southampton at St Mary’s last time out.

Betting tips

We enjoy a bet or two here at Football-Talk towers and we think it’s important to do research before handing over our hard-earned cash. That’s why we use Betegy.com, which is a great resource that uses statistical data to come up with free accurate football predictions each week.

The software has crunched the numbers and their algorithm predicts an away victory for Liverpool. A home win comes out at just 24% likelihood, the draw 36% with the away win seen as a 40% shot. This is slightly surprising given how well Villa have performed against Liverpool of late but the algorithm has an excellent success rate and nailed it’s prediction of Man Utd to beat Sunderland 1-0 on Saturday lunchtime, so who am I to argue?!

Paddy Power are currently offering odds of 3/4 for a Liverpool win but we like to look for a little more value with our bets. Betegy also predicts the exact scoreline and their software predicts a 2-0 win for the Reds, which is a far more tempting 8/1 with Paddy Power. So that would be our tip for the game.

Why not head over to Betegy and see what all the fuss is about? It’s free to join and you’ll receive free and accurate predictions for games throughout Europe every week. They have an excellent success rate, 76% over the last three games, so far so why not give it a try?

Player to watch: Suarez

While Villa’s Benteke is certainly one the visitors will need to watch out for, the main man in this game is likely to be Liverpool’s controversial striker Luis Suarez. While he’s not everyone’s cut of tea, his talent can not be questioned. He’s a superb player and will no doubt be a huge handful again this weekend for Villa, in fact I predict he’ll get himself on the score-sheet and extend his lead over Robin van Persie in the race for the Golden Boot.

Paddy Power are offering odds of 28/1 that Suarez will be the first goal-scorer in a 2-0 win for Liverpool, so that’s certainly worth a few quid in my opinion.

What would be your score predictions for the game and who would be your player to watch? Leave your suggestions in the comments section below.