In-form Aston Villa will travel to Bournemouth for their next Premier League clash on Sunday. An impressive start to the season has Villa in fourth, with 28 points while Bournemouth are two places above relegation. Bournemouth didn’t have a very good start to the season, going nine league matches without a win. However, after that poor run, the Cherries have now won three of their last four league matches. This has handed them a reprieve in the relegation fight as they are now seven points from the danger zone. A 3-1 win over Sheffield United in their last game handed them a second straight win in the league. Oliver McBurnie’s late goal for Sheffield however denied them a second straight clean sheet, having earlier beaten Newcastle United 2-0. The win over Sheffield was the fourth of their last five matches to produce over 2.5 goals.
Unai Emery’s men have Champions League hopes and currently occupy fourth spot. Villa are also still in the early title race as they trail leaders Arsenal by just two points. In their last game, they punched a ticket to the Europa League knockout phases after beating Legia Warsaw 2-1. That win extended their winning streak to four games. Last time out in the league Villa came from a goal down to seal a 2-1 win over Tottenham. The biggest concern for Emery’s team is the few clean sheets returned in their recent matches. None of their last nine matches has returned a clean sheet. Villa have however conceded more than once in just one of 10 matches. Partly due to that, all of Villa’s last four matches have produced over 2.5 goals.
Bournemouth and Aston Villa have struggled to keep clean sheets in recent games. Most of their matches, as a result, have been high-scoring. We expect the same trend here, thus our prediction for Bournemouth v Aston Villa is for over 2.5 goals.