Bournemouth finished in a rather flattering position , second in the Championship, just two points back of Fulham, but the London side were head and shoulders better and the Cherries will have to improve big time to survive this season. Head coach Scott Parker also has a lot of EPL questions to answer after his 20/21 Fulham campaign, when he played too cautiously and his team scored just 27 goals, they were better than that and he was too often seemingly in a trance on the sidelines, waiting for things to go wrong before he took any action and my own personal jury on him is still very much out, at least at this elite level ( 37 points from 48 EPL games). The Cherries have spent very little, just one player of note, from the Championship this week and not exactly a game changer of an addition. If you offered them 17th place now, they would snatch your hand off and that is the extent of their ambitions and I am not sure that is Parker's forte by any stretch of the imagination, his success has come in "winning" teams, not those looking to grind out points game after game. They are, arguably, the poorest top flight side now in financial terms and I expect them to be relegated.

 

Villa will surely see this as a good fixture to start and this is the season that Steven Gerrard* will be judged on. Towards the end of last season I wrote .....

 

It was actually 14th place and they let things slide late on, but  improved defensively under SG (by circa 0.3 pg) and will continue to do so with some good additions in this window, including CB Diego Carlos from Sevilla, they also made the signing of Coutinho permanent . They were basically a top ten performer with Gerrard at the helm and should have too much firepower for Bournemouth. Villa are the #1 club from England's second city and should always be competing for top ten and beyond.

 

2 units Aston Villa to score "over" 1.5 goals 2.14 asian line.

 

Good luck!