Preview: Villa head to Everton seeking first three points of Garde era

Everything is going so well! Villa just got a point off league-leading Manchester City, Rémi Garde looks like he knows what he’s doing and we’re destined to pull out of the bottom three!

Wait, what? We now have no senior left backs?

God damnit, Villa.

What to know about Aston Villa

Well, Jordan Amavi is out for the year, which means we get a platoon of Kieran Richardson, José Angel Crespo and Lewis Kinsella at the position until January. That’s less than ideal.

But instead, let’s focus on the biggest bright spot at this club right now: Jordan Ayew. The Ghanaian international was back at work for his country over the international break and he got on the scoresheet again with a nice goal. Ayew is brimming with confidence right now and looks like he could be the 10- or 15-goal scorer Aston Villa need to lead themselves out of the relegation battle.

Get the rest of the squad working together and flowing well, Rémi, and your job is going to get a lot easier thanks to Ayew banging in the goals.

Aside from that, we’ll still be looking on to see how Garde picks for his second game in charge. The point against Manchester City was a little bit lucky, but that’s exactly the type of thing we needed after a, quite frankly, terrible first couple months.

What to know about Everton

They’re managed by a man who oscillates between being a tactical genius and a bumbling idiot on the touchline.

If you know anything about me, you’ll know I’ve never been a fan of Roberto Martínez. He’s always been presented as this great manager or whatnot because his teams at Wigan played nice, attacking football, but he also got Wigan relegated after pulling survival after survival.

Then he kinda almost dragged Everton into a relegation battle last year. That’s bad.

Tom Cleverley will suit up against the Villa for the first time since leaving the club! I don’t like the guy, but with Jordan Veretout in his place, I’m not sure we had much of a downgrade — though Villa had to spend significant money to get the replacement in.

At the end of the day, Cleverley played Villa Park off as the place where he wanted to be and then got up and moved for Everton at the first opportunity.

Forget that guy.

Everton have a good squad and going to Goodison Park is going to be a difficult — but not impossible — task for Garde and his Villa side. They’ve got some injuries on their back line, but Villa will have to contain Romelu Lukaku and company to have a chance to snatch a result.

The odds

Bovada: Everton 10/17, Villa 19/4, Draw 3/1
Paddy Power: Everton 4/7, Villa 11/2, Draw 29/10
SkyBet: Everton 4/7, Villa 11/2, Draw 11/4

The prediction

Villa will play well and Ayew’s going to do something — score, assist, win a penalty — to get Villa on the board. But at the end of the day, this feels like one of those fixtures where we’ll walk away shaking our heads at a good performance that yields nothing.

Everton 2, Villa 1.

What say you? Let us know in the comments!