Brighton v Aston Villa

• 20:00 GMT on Sky Sports Main Event
• Match odds:

Will the real Aston Villa please stand up?

In their last five matches Dean Smith’s side have gone lose, win, lose, win, lose, win.

Victories over Newcastle, Southampton and Arsenal have been interlaced with defeats to Manchester City, Burnley and West Ham. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of pattern with Villa. Some games they win and some games they lose.

Contrast that with Brighton. Before their 1-1 draw with Burnley in their last Premier League match, only Manchester City had collected more points from their previous four games than the Seagulls.

Is a 7/4 upset on the cards then? I wouldn’t rule it out, but at the same time I’m not banking on it. I just can’t quite work Aston Villa out.

In their 3-2 loss to Burnley for example, Villa won the expected goals (xG) battle 2.98 to 0.79 according to . Yet in their 1-0 win over Southampton, the Saints dominated and were up 2.51 to 0.77.

You can use expected goals to overrule results when looking for trends. A tipster could argue that an out-of-form team is due a result after a good run in the xG model.

But with Villa it remains impossible. They’ve been yo-yoing since January in both expected and actual results.