Football – England – Premier League
Saturday 24th May 2015 – Kickoff: 1500hrs
Aston Villa and manager Tim Sherwood received a massive blow to their recent revival in fortunes in the Premier League on Saturday when they were demolished 6-1 at St Marys Stadium which brought them back down to earth with a jolt.
But recent wins against Sherwood’s former club Tottenham (which would have given him immense satisfaction), Everton and West Ham have managed to steer Villa to Premier League safety (just) with the final match of the season this Saturday against already-relegated Burnley at Villa Park ahead of them.
Sherwood was appointed the new manager of Aston Villa on Valentine’s Day and he’s currently enjoying the honeymoon period with his new team having secured wins over west midlands rivals West Brom on home turf along with other wins at Villa Park over Everton and West Ham, while their overall home record stands at 5-6-7 18/24.
Visitors Burnley will bow out of the Premier League this afternoon in their last match of the season at Villa Park despite a heroic effort to retain their top flight status. The recent 1-0 win at Hull City and last Saturday’s point with Stoke City wasn’t enough for Sean Dyche’s men to stay up, so it’ll be Championship football again at Turf Moor next season.
I sincerely hope that Dyche isn’t made the scape-goat for Burnley as I believe he’ll stand a very good chance of getting the Clarets back up again, so a bit of patience is required in the boardroom.
Just one win from their last eight matches though tells it’s own story, and the recent win at Hull ended a run of eleven matches on the road without success which has contributed towards their poor away record of 2-5-11 13/32.
But Burnley have simply not scored enough goals on their travels as they’ve failed to hit the back of the net a total of ten matches, and this could once again haunt them at Villa Park this afternoon.
With this in mind, I’ll back the hosts to bounce back here to give their fans a final boost for the season, with Villa winning this perhaps 1-0.
Pick: Aston Villa straight win @ 2.10 Coral
