Aston Villa vs. Crystal Palace Odds, Picks: Betting Predictions for Sunday’s Premier League Match

Crystal Palace at Aston Villa Odds & Pick

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It's do-or-die time for Aston Villa if they want to keep their slim hopes for another Premier League season alive. The Villans are seven points behind Watford and West Ham with four matches to go.

Crystal Palace's job is done for the season. The Eagles have secured their spot in the Premier League for 2020/21 and there's no European Football in their sights. Villa should be the more motivated side, but they haven't won a league match since January, so it's hard to say that motivation alone will give them an edge.

The good news for Villa is that Crystal Palace are not that much better than them and you can make a good case that the Villans have played better football since the break.

Even though Aston Villa have only two points to show from their six matches, their underlying metrics suggest they have played well enough to earn nearly eight points from those six matches: Villa have scored only twice and conceded nine goals over that span, but they've actually given a decent account of themselves during a stretch that saw them play Wolves, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United.

Compare Villa's -7 goal differential to their -1.19 expected goal differential and you can plainly see that Dean Smith's side can feel a bit snakebitten.

Expected goals (also known as xG) is an advanced statistic that gives an indication of whether results are based on sustainable factors like a steady creation of scoring chances, or whether it is down to aspects such as luck or outstanding goalkeeping.

Palace may have 15 more points than Villa on the season, but if you look at just their numbers since the hiatus, there's no doubt which team is playing better at the moment.

Villa will need to score — something they haven't done in their last three matches — to win this match, but they should find life easier going forward against Crystal Palace than they did against Wolves, Manchester United and Liverpool, three of the four strongest defenses in the Premier League by expected goals.

Betting on a team that hasn't won a league match in six months at +130 is a bit unsettling, but there's plenty of reasons to believe that the Villans can get the job done on Sunday.