Aston Villa v Leeds United Betting Tips

Two teams who experienced the festive joys of a Boxing Day victory go head-to-head at Villa Park on Thursday evening as Leeds travel to take on Aston Villa.

Both of these two are enjoying decent campaigns so far, although it has to be said that Leeds, who are sat firmly in the play-off places in 5th position, have been the better of the two sides.

Gary Monk has come into the Yorkshire club this season and seemingly turned things around. There is genuine optimism surrounding the club and it is felt that this could finally be the season that sees them go from a Championship “also ran” to serious promotion contenders.

In the betting, given the way things have gone for these two lately, it’s a bit odd to find Leeds as big as 3/1 to win and it is probably fair to say that this underestimates them quite a bit. Gary Monk’s side are performing really well right now and are fancied to continue on the up. With this in mind, at odds of 15/8, ‘Leeds United Draw No Bet’ is definitely a bet to be on.

If you were to merely glance at the home/away form of these two teams, it would be easy to side with Villa here – especially since they’re the home side with an unbeaten record – but they haven’t been all that convincing of late and it doesn’t look as though it will be long before they’re on the losing side against one of the divisions better teams.

Villa may have won their last five home matches under Bruce, but they haven’t exactly put teams to the sword and, in looking at the teams they’ve faced, you can’t help but feel that the fixture list has been kind to them. Wigan, Burton, Cardiff and Blackburn are all positioned towards the foot of the table – narrow wins against such opposition isn’t exactly the most favourable form.

Bruce’s men have won by just a single goal in four of their last five at home, conceding in three of those. They just about avoided what would have been a disappointing point against Burton Albion on Boxing Day, while they could only manage a single goal victory over struggling QPR in their previous fixture. On top of this, considering that the opposition faced recently at home have been somewhat below Leeds’ quality, it’s hard to fancy the hosts with any conviction here. Very hard indeed.

The visitors have been impressive in the way they’ve gone about their business of late. Monk has his team performing well at both ends, combining both industrious and attacking styles of play to good effect. Their strong form of late culminated in a convincing 4-1 win away to Preston on Boxing Day and it is fancied that confidence is sky-high in the Leeds camp right now.

In addition, Leeds come into this fixture having won eight of their last ten. The only times they haven’t walked off the pitch victorious during this time was against the top-two in the division (Newcastle and Brighton). Other than defeats against the league’s leading pair, The Whites have been in superb form. They’ve won five of their last six, scoring 11, conceding two and keeping four clean sheets in the process. Among their recent matches stands an impressive 2-0 home win against this very opposition and it’s not that hard to see a similar outcome here.

Right now you’d struggle to argue that Leeds aren’t easily the better of these two teams and the visitors are fancied to get another positive result.

Another bet worth being on ahead of this fixture is ‘Leeds to Score Over 0.5 Second Half Goals’. Whether it be a case of breaking the deadlock after half time or finishing teams off in the second period, Leeds have scored a lot of their goals after the break lately and it would be no surprise at all if this happened again. After all, the visitors have only failed to score in the second half once in their last five, while 67% of their overall goals this season have come after half-time.

See more tips here.