Aston Villa hosts West Bromwich in the first leg of English Championship play-offs semifinals. The match will be played on Saturday, May 11th at Villa Park (Birmingham)
Aston Villa will try to return to the Premier League for the second season in a row. In this championship, there were moments when it seemed that the team had already failed the championship and would not get into the playoff zone. There was a time when it balanced on the verge of the top ten. But closer to the finish, the team gathered, gained a very decent shape and now will try to reach the final through the 1st round of playoffs, and then return to the elite.
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West Bromwich claimed a direct promotion to the Premier League for a long time. The team repeatedly climbed up to 2nd place giving this promotion but then rolled off it. The Hawthorns have an excellent attacking line, thanks to which they will play in the playoffs with the fixture of 87 goals scored; only the champion Norwich has more goals. But no one wants to work out properly in defense; Bromwich conceded 62 goals, which is the worst fixture in the first ten along with Swansea. By the way, Aston Villa has the same picture - only 1 goal less allowed.
In the championship, the rivals tied a draw in the field of West, but the Hawthorns were stronger in Birmingham. But that meeting in February was the penultimate one, which the Villans lost in the championship. West Bromwich is not quite convincing in away matches. There were 8 of 13 losses in the away games, and half of them happened in the last 6 games of the championship. In turn, Aston Villa won the last 5 games in their field. Nevertheless, the Villans lost to Bromwich in 2 last home games. But they won 3 home meetings in a row before that. Therefore, if we look at all this data, we can’t predict the winner in the upcoming match.
However, we can wait for a lot of goals despite the fact that this is a playoff match. Given the goal difference 82-61 and 87-62, the style of the game, where teams prefer primarily attacking actions and do not care much about the defense (and even don’t know how to defend), we can expect a prolific match. In this championship, the rivals played with 2-0 and 2-2 scores. Most likely, there will be something like the second result in this game. That is, the opponents may score 3 goals for two and even more. They do not know how to play defense first. West Brom played 27 times with over 2.5 goals scored in the tournament. Aston-Villa did the same 28 times, 17 of them were at home.
Prediction for the match: Over 2.5 goals scored
