Aston Villa v Tottenham: Spurs to compound misery on Lambert

A return to home comforts may seem like good news for Paul Lambert’s young guns after their 8-0 thumping at Chelsea, but in all likelihood things are unlikely to get much better for Aston Villa against Tottenham.

Villa have only lost one of their last seven at home in the top flight and have shut out the opposition in each of the last three.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of time to work on their failures against Chelsea and they are hosting a Tottenham side that is the only one in the top flight to score in all of their away games so far in the campaign.

Meanwhile, they are also playing host to Emmanuel Adebayor, who certainly enjoys playing against Villa.

Adebayor has four goals in three appearances against Villa and will fancy his chances of kick-starting his season that has witnessed just one league goal so far against a young and inexperienced backline.

All things considered, Tottenham look fine value at 21/20 to beat Villa, with Adebayor 13/8 to be on target at any point in the 90 minutes.

Another thing in Spurs’ favour is their apparent joy of Boxing Day fixtures, where they are unbeaten in seven in a run that includes five successes.

Villa have already shown against Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United this season that they are more than capable of making life difficult for those battling for Champions League qualification and Lambert will obviously demand an improvement after the Chelsea shambles.

Villa are 12/5 to take the three points, but this is not the best value given they were double this price against Man Utd.

Furthermore, they have not won in eight meetings with Spurs.

The draw can be backed at 5/2 and this is a result that Villa would most definitely take ahead of kick off.

All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date