H2H: Southampton vs Aston Villa - Prediction (Premier League

H2H: Southampton vs Aston Villa – Comparison.

James Ward-Prowse, now a veteran of 250 PL appearances, is only behind Matt Le Tissier (63) in terms of PL assists for Southampton (27), whilst Ollie Watkins has netted in Villa’s last two games following a nine-game scoreless run of league appearances. Ahead of this round, Villa had won both halves in a league-high 27.78% of their PL fixtures (five).

Southampton Insights.

Although Southampton haven’t returned a better 19-game Premier League (PL) record since 2014/15, their 3-1 defeat to Arsenal in midweek has left them with just one league win from seven games (D3, L3). Worryingly, they’ve scored just three times during that sequence, with those goals all coming before the 20th minute. Furthermore, they haven’t always capitalised on scoring first this term (W7, D2, L3). A concern is that those three defeats when scoring first all came at home, although they were against established ‘top six’ sides, whilst prior to Wednesday’s loss, the ‘Saints’ had gone unbeaten in four competitive home games (W3, D1). Notably, eight of their last ten competitive home matches featured at least one goal prior to the 30th minute.

Aston Villa Insights.

Sitting in mid-table on 29 points alongside their hosts, Aston Villa’s 3-2 defeat to Burnley (Jan 27) saw them fail to convert scoring first into victory for the first time this PL campaign (W8), but it’s now nine league fixtures since their defence was breached before the 30th minute (W4, D2, L3). However they’ll have to be careful late on after conceding twice after the 75th minute in two of their last three outings. Now winless in four PL road trips (D1, L3), it’s worth noting that three of those matches featured different HT/FT outcomes. Furthermore, the ‘Villans’ may not relish this trip to St Mary’s given they haven’t won any of their last four competitive fixtures here (D1, L3), conceding an average of 2.75 goals per game.