Aston Villa vs Cardiff Predictions, Betting Tips and Match Previews

This game sees two sides who have already changed their managers this season meet and in both cases the change seems to be working out for the best. Villa are unbeaten in 6 games now under Steve Bruce and put in their best performance of the season last time out at Brighton. They were unfortunate not to leave a really tough fixture with all 3 points and it was the clearest evidence yet that a Villa revival is underway. At home they’ll be expecting to back that up with a win and it’s important they do that in order to potentially climb into the top half of the table.

They are the only side in the Championship yet to taste home defeat, so slowly but surely Villa Park is becoming a tough place for opposing teams to go to again, which hasn’t been the case for far too many years as far as Villa fans are concerned. There is still work to do and Villa have only won one match this season by more than one goal and that was a home game against a very poor Rotherham side.

Cardiff will provide a much stiffer test than that and they also appear to be heading in the right direction under new coach Neil Warnock. His 6 games in charge have produced 3 wins and 2 defeats but in each case the margin of victory was just 1 goal, so like Villa all their recent games have been tight. They pushed Newcastle pretty close at St James’ in their most recent away game, losing 2-1, so the hosts can’t afford to think this is going to be anything other than a difficult game.

Villa’s extra quality and renewed sense of belief and purpose should just see them home though. Cardiff haven’t kept a clean sheet since the opening day of the season across Birmingham at St Andrews. They’ve conceded in all 17 games they’ve played since and average 1.75 goals per game conceded on their travels. Even Warnock hasn’t really improved that so there should be enough chances in this for Villa to win it. However, both teams have scored in 75% of games at Villa Park this term so they may well need to score twice to edge this but they should be capable of doing that.

Therefore, backing Villa to win by 1 goal at 13/5 looks to offer good value here.