I trust you all had a good Christmas?
Mine was busy, but not as hectic as usual.
Boxing day has come around again then and the lads are up against Swansea in a match that intrigues me, in that I really don’t have a clue about how I think it’s going to go.
In that typical biased football fan approach, I always perceive the Villa as a much bigger club than Swansea and even though we probably are, we don’t have a very good record against them.
We’ve only beaten them once in our last six meetings, having drawn three and lost the other two.
Our form over the last few games is good, depending on how you look at it.
We’ve only lost one in our last seven games, but at the same time we’ve only won two in our last thirteen or so.
Basically, we’ve become a lot tougher to beat and I don’t see many goals today.
We’ve got some good news, with Hutton being available. Gabby is up for selection after having his red card rescinded and Tom Cleverley is also available.
You can bet your boots that all three will be picked, as I’ve given up on Lambert changing anything round.
Kieran Richardson is still banned, but I’m not really sure that’s a bad thing, as he has yet to convince me of anything.
I can’t say I’ve seen much of Swansea, but they do have a couple of dangerous players, the obvious being Wilfried Bony, who could be back today after being “rested” in last week’s win against Hull.
Gylfi Sigurdsson, Leon Britton and Jefferson Montero are all back from injuries.
Given that I don’t think there are going to be many goals today, the really big player for us has got to be Christian Benteke. It seems like he’s in very decent form and he’s definitely my favourite for us to score.
It’s quite worrying how he’s become our “go to” option and although our football has been better of late, I still find myself wondering who’s going to score if Benteke doesn’t?
I’m not going to bother writing our lineup, because we all know pretty much what it’ll be.
The only question for me is which combination of midfielders will Lambert go with?
My prediction?
Well, I only see a goal in it either way and I suppose I have to be optimistic.
One-nil to Villa.
