Dean Smith's Aston Villa should prove too strong for troubled Trotters

Sky Bet Championship
Sky Sports Football, 7.45pm Friday

Dean Smith began his tenure as Aston Villa manager with a 1-0 home victory over Swansea but the new gaffer has been left frustrated following consecutive away defeats against Norwich and Queens Park Rangers.

Villa sit 17th in the table, seven points shy of the Sky Bet Championship playoff places, but there is plenty of room for improvement and they should spark into life by comfortably seeing off struggling Bolton at Villa Park.

Smith, who swapped Brentford for Villa at the beginning of October, has an array of attacking talent at his disposal including Jack Grealish, Tammy Abraham and Jonathan Kodjia.

He is aiming to succeed where Steve Bruce failed in getting the best out of that trio and the hope is that Smith’s attractive style of football can be integrated sooner rather than later in order to initiate a promotion push in the second half of the campaign.

Expectations were raised after the win against Swansea and subsequently lowered following the two losses but Norwich and QPR are two of the most in-form teams in the second tier and the same can not be said for Bolton, who only appear to be heading in one direction.

Phil Parkinson’s cash-strapped Trotters stayed up on the final day of the 2017-18 season and were organised to the point where they were able to claim ten points from their opening four matches of the new campaign.

Bolton have chalked up only six points in their last 11 Championship matches, however, and only Ipswich and Rotherham are shorter than the Trotters in the relegation betting.

Parkinson revealed after Saturday’s loss to Hull that he is happy with the job he is doing in tricky circumstances, but he has his work cut out for him if he is to turn around a run which has seen Bolton score just once since beating Derby at the end of September.

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Villa meanwhile, are trying to knit everything together and there were signs of progress against Rangers, where they enjoyed 68 per cent of possession and forced 18 shots but only five on target.

They should prove too strong for Wanderers, though quotes of no bigger than 19-40 look skinny enough and, with Bolton continually suffering from a lack of cutting edge going forward, backing the hosts to win to nil could prove to be the best option.

Recommendation
Aston Villa to win to nil
1pt 11-8 Sky Bet

Bet on this match at soccerbase.com

Team news
Aston Villa
Loanee Yannick Bolasie is in contention to make his first start but midfielder Birkir Bjarnason is out. Albert Adomah is fit again.

Bolton
Bolton have no fresh injury concerns while Jason Lowe returns from a suspension. Gary O’Neil, Stephen Ireland and Sammy Ameobi remain sidelined.

Key stat
Bolton have scored just one goal in their last five Sky Bet Championship matches.

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