Weekend Outlook (05 Jan 2008)

Aston Villa vs Manchester United

"...Sir Fergie (Sir Alex Ferguson) has never lost an FA Cup 3rd Round match...."

- JayWalk, 05 Jan 2008

A happy new year to one and all and here's wishing everybody a great 2008 ahead!

We are now officially into the second half of the season as we have completed the Christmas/New Year fixture crunch.

We did pretty ok with a 3-0-1 but while we all aim for a perfect 4-0-0, it is not as easy as it looks as evident by our neighbours both above and below us with a slightly better 3-1-0.

We really struggled with our last two games, losing 1-2 to West Ham and scraping a 1-0 win over lowly Birmingham. While the picture looked rosy with our 20 goals attempted (13 on target) compared to their 12 goals attempted (4 on target), allow me to bring your attention to the Time Of Possession which was 50% apiece.

Under such a skewed shots statistics, one would have expected the same in terms of possession and so at 50-50 you know that we failed to dominate this game despite impressive shot numbers. And the probably explain the odd-goal win as we squandered too many chances.

JayWalk The Talk: Good news from the sickbay as Park is out and running when he played against Birmingham. Scholes is ready to come back really soon and Tevez was given the green light after a bruising scare at the Birmingham game. Still, I think Fergie may rest Tevez today for safety reasons.

Elsewhere, we should expect Van der Sar back between the sticks and Rooney overcoming his flu.

Otherwise, we are only left with Neville, Foster and Silvestre still struggling to recover.

Over at Aston Villa, touted to be the club with the smallest squad strength, only Carew will be unavailable for selection.

JayWalk The Walk: Let me present the stats here:

• Aston Villa has failed at the FA Cup first hurdle 5 times in the last 6 attempts.
• Aston Villa lost 9 of their 11 FA Cup encounters to ManUtd.
• Aston Villa has not beaten ManUtd in their last 20 head-to-heads in all competitions. The last was dated back in 1999 during Worthington Cup which we played our second team.
• Sir Fergie has never lost an FA Cup 3rd Round match.

So, it looked pretty attractive for the bookies to set the decimals odds of 1.85 for ManUtd to beat the 0.50-ball handicap. I don't see how we can lose this.

I say go for ManUtd today.

Disclaimer: The above views are purely my own two-cents' worth. In other words, I cannot and will not guarantee that my predictions are accurate. If you want to bet on the game, do so at your own risk. Also, please bet responsibly and within your means regardless of how "sure thing" that game may appear to be. As the old saying goes, "The Ball Is Round". Good luck.