Aston Villa vs Tottenham Odds
| Aston Villa Odds | +137 |
| Tottenham Odds | +160 |
| Draw | +300 |
| Over / Under | 2.5 -300 / +240 |
Aston Villa and Tottenham meet at Villa Park for a massive clash for the final spot in the top four.
Aston Villa have been getting results by the skin of their teeth to have a five point gap over Spurs for fourth place. Unai Emery has been dealing with a lot of injuries to key players, but he has been doing a good job tactically to keep Villa in a Champions League spot.
Tottenham started the season out in the best form possible, but then injuries took their toll and caused a really bad run of form, but have since gotten healthy and have closed the gap on Aston Villa for fourth place. They lost this match 2-1 in November, so they will be out for revenge on Sunday.
Aston Villa
Aston Villa are a bit limited in their midfield in terms of ball stopping, which is not great against the way that Tottenham want to build up. Boubacar Kamara is out, but his backup Jacob Ramsey also went down with an injury against Luton Town. Tottenham want to build through the middle of the pitch using a lot of quick, short combination passes, so without Kamara or Ramsey in the middle they are going to be able to do that with pretty relative ease.
Aston Villa also have a pretty big weakness Tottenham can exploit – defending set pieces. Villa are dead last in the Premier League in xG per set piece allowed and conceded two goals against Luton Town off of set pieces. Tottenham are 10th in xG per set piece and have scored 10 goals off of them this season, so they will definitely have their chances.
It's going to be a fascinating clash on how successful Aston Villa's build up is against Tottenham's press. In the previous meeting, Tottenham had a PPDA of 7.6 and forced nine high turnovers, so if they are successful with their pressing again, Aston Villa could give them a lot of easy transition opportunities.
Tottenham
Tottenham under Ange Postecoglu want to press high, play a high line and try to disrupt a team's build up play. They’ve been successful to a certain extent having the second-best PPDA in the Premier League and forcing the most high turnovers as well. With Aston Villa trying to build out of the back it’s going to create one of two things, either Tottenham are going be successful and create a lot of easy transition opportunities or Aston Villa are going to play through their press and be able to play a lot of balls in behind, which they had a lot success with in the previous meeting.
Being a good high pressing team is great, but you also have to be decent defending in transition, which is not the case with Tottenham. They are 16th in final third to box entry conversion rate allowed and are allowing 1.49 npxG per 90 minutes.
Tottenham didn’t have James Maddison available. He makes a massive difference in the ability to build through the middle of the pitch. Even though he’s missed 10 matches this season, he is still second on the team in passes into the penalty area and has the most progressive passes.
Aston Villa vs Tottenham
Prediction
This should be a very back and forth entertaining type of match.
The way these two sides want to set up defensively is going to allow a lot of balls in behind the last line of the defense. In the previous meeting, not only were there a total of four expected goals created and 33 shots between the two sides, but three goals were VAR’d off due to offsides.
Tottenham are going to have plenty of chances against Villa's high line and have the pace to get in behind time and time against just like they did in the previous meeting.
Either one of two things are going to happen when Aston Villa try to build out of the back. Either they are going to turn the ball over in their own end of the pitch and give Tottenham easy transition opportunities or they are going to have plenty of opportunities to play balls in behind Tottenham's high line once they beat the first line of the pressure.
I have 3.9 goals projected for this match, so I really like the value on the over.
