Aston Villa v Olympiacos Betting Tips [2 May 2024]

Aston Villa’s continental campaign continues this Thursday in the Europa Conference League semis, at home to Olympiakos. As things stand, Villa will at least play in the Europa League next season. However, they are fighting on two fronts, with a place in the Champions League their top target. For now though, their focus will be trained on securing a first leg advantage against the Greek giants. A 3-3 aggregate draw saw Villa need penalties to eliminate Lille in the Conference League quarter-finals. They will want a more straightforward win in this tie, to avoid an extra 30 minutes of football away from home. To get there, Villa will first have to work on their defending. The 2-2 draw with Chelsea last time out left them with just five clean sheets in 19 matches. Villa should have taken a comfortable win in that game after leading 2-0, but in the end had to be saved by VAR ruling out a late Chelsea goal. While they work on their defence, Unai Emery will want an extension to their attacking consistency. The team failed to score in just two of the last 19 matches. Meanwhile, they come into this game beaten just once in six, with three wins. In their 12 Conference League matches this season, Villa lost twice. In this competition at home, they have six straight wins.

Olympiakos are on the tail end of their season in Greece and things don’t look too shabby for them. The visitors are fourth in their championship round with a game in hand, trailing leaders AEK by five points. With two more rounds to go and facing the leaders next, a place in the Champions League is achievable. Olympiakos have the Conference League as another channel towards European football next season. A comfortable 4-1 win over Lamia in their last outing is a perfect warmup for their trip to Villa Park. It will not be the first time they face an English side, having faced West Ham United this season in the Europa League. They did lose 1-0 in London, but will hope for a better return to England. Their confidence will be fueled by a run of just a loss in seven matches. Olympiakos won five of the seven matches. They lost 1-0 to Fenerbahce in the last round of this competition, but triumphed on post-match penalties. That marked a fourth straight Conference League game in which they failed to keep a clean sheet. Both teams scored in three of their last four Conference League matches.

These two sides have good runs in the Conference League and either side will view this as a winnable game. Villa, playing at home and with a lot of importance attached to this competition, will go all out for a win. Olympiakos, on the other hand, don’t look like a side that will make things easy for Villa. In light of that, we expect this trend of good attacks but leaky defences to continue here. Our prediction for Aston Villa v Olympiakos is for both teams to score.