Norwich vs Aston Villa Predictions, Betting Tips and Match Previews

These sides started out as two of the pre-season favourites for promotion but both are well off the pace in terms of going up automatically ahead of what is a key game for both sides. Victory for Norwich over strong opposition would signal their return to form after a really poor run of results, while a win at Carrow Road could act as a real springboard for Villa as they look to improve their away record.

Overall though it’s quite hard to pick a winner here. Villa have been the league’s draw specialists this term. They’ve drawn 50% of their matches since dropping down into the Championship and have drawn two more matches than any other side in the division. The arrival of Steve Bruce has sparked an improvement but they’ve still been struggling to deliver the goods on the road. Since winning at Reading in his first away game, Villa have collected just two points from three matches on their travels with 1-1 draws coming at Birmingham and Brighton.

Norwich will try to take the game to Villa, which may just suit the visitors to some extent after they were frustrated for 88 minutes on Saturday by a Wigan side that parked the bus at Villa Park. A moment of magic from Jack Grealish settled it and Villa’s more creative players should get more space in this one.

The Canaries were convincing 5-0 winners in their last home game but failed to back that up as they went down 2-1 at Barnsley at the weekend, for their 6th defeat in the space of 7 league matches. Defensively they’ve been very poor at times this season, conceding 1.6 goals per game on average and managing clean sheets in just 15% of their matches. Certainly given their current form, you’d have a hard time backing them to win this outright, particularly given only 2nd place Brighton have lost fewer matches than the Claret & Blues.

However, by the same token it’s hard to feel confident about backing Villa to win on the road either. They’ve managed to do that in just 1 of their last 31 competitive away games. They are at least avoiding defeat with more regularity now on their travels and therefore backing the draw at 23/10 could just be the smartest bet here.