Aston Villa v Man City Tip

This is a battle between two teams who are both probably playing better than they are getting credit for lately. Manchester City obviously should win, but it may well be a lot closer than many people expect.

As I said before we landed a 5/1 winner on the champions last weekend, City have actually had perfectly decent results in the past two months (W8 D2 L1), it’s just that United have been absolutely relentless. Mancini still has the defence performing well and that may be boosted by the return of Vincent Kompany on Monday. At the other end, Carlos Tevez seems to have suddenly discovered his goalscoring touch.

But this shouldn’t be anything like the repeat of the 5-0 drubbing the hosts handed out at the Etihad back in November. Villa are still in big trouble but they have really started to fight for survival in recent weeks.

Paul Lambert’s youngsters have been competitive against everyone for a while now and haven’t lost by more than one goal in any of their last eight outings. They have also scored in every one of their last seven fixtures with Benteke proving to be a constant menace in particular.

With these two statistics in mind, I’m going to go for a narrow 2-1 victory for City at best odds of 17/2 with BetVictor.