Aston Villa vs Manchester City prediction: 2.23 on Villa is the fair side

At 1.72 in the middle of the market, Manchester City are being priced as a 58% proposition away from home, and the price has not moved a penny in 24 hours. The flip side is Aston Villa +0.5, available at 2.23 with Pinnacle, which asks you to believe Villa avoid defeat a little under 45% of the time. Strip the margin out of the median 1X2 prices and Villa-or-draw comes to roughly 44%, so this is not a bargain on the numbers alone. The question is whether the crowd has City right.

I am not convinced it has. City's recent run reads well on the surface: 5-1 against AEK Athens, 3-0 at Liverpool. Look underneath and there is more give in them than a 1.72 price allows for. They shipped four in Paris and only edged Ipswich 3-2 at home. Villa, meanwhile, have kept two clean sheets in a row: a 1-0 win at Newcastle, a 6-0 demolition of Fenerbahce in the Champions League, and the only blemish a 2-2 with Brentford. A favourite that keeps letting the game open up, against a home side keeping clean sheets, is exactly the sort of match where the short price is doing a lot of work on reputation.

What the market has not done is shorten City since the midweek win, which tells me the money has already priced in the hype and found nothing more to add. That leaves the home side's half of the handicap as the cheaper story to hold. I would not take Villa outright at 4.75; the draw cover is where the value, such as it is, sits.

Verdict: Aston Villa +0.5 at 2.23, because City at 1.72 is paying for a defence that has not earned it.