Aston Villa vs. Watford Predictions: Philippe Coutinho tipped to sparkle from range

Steven Gerrard comes up against his former England manager Roy Hodgson on Saturday afternoon when an indifferent Aston Villa host struggling Watford in the Midlands (3pm, kick-off)...

Steven Gerrard exploded out of the blocks with four wins from his first six matches, but his side have since struggled, registering just the one win from his subsequent six league games. However, Villa have the ideal opportunity to leap out of their slump against a Watford side who alarmingly haven’t won at all since November.

Watford’s third manager of the season, Roy Hodgson, has yet to inspire an instant new manager bounce, picking up one point from a possible nine, while his side have yet to score since his arrival. The Hornets are without a win in 12 games in all competition, taking just two points from a possible 33 during that time.

The bookies’ have Villa as the odds-on 7/10 favourites to return to winning ways, the draw is 59/20, while a first Watford win in 13 games is out at 49/10.

It’s been quite the Premier League return for Philippe Coutinho, who in four games has scored twice, bagged two assists, fired in eight shots, four of which have been on target.

The Brazilian has had 32 shots for Aston Villa and Barcelona this season, nearly half of which (15) were taken outside of the penalty box. If we delve a little deeper, over half of his 598 shots at club level since 2014 have been outside the box (352).

With that said, we really like the look of a boosted 7/1 - from 11/2 - for Coutinho to have 2 or more shots on target from outside the box (Paddy Power).

After all, this is a man who has scored 19 Premier League goals from outside the box, he’s certainly not afraid to have a pop from range and with Villa up against one of the league’s most porous defences, expect Coutinho to be raining the shots in on goal.

Meanwhile, Coutinho is 12/5 to score anytime, 13/2 to open the scoring, and 14/1 to find the back of the next on two or more occasions.

Wins haven’t exactly been a staple on the Aston Villa menu recently, but there are fewer teams Gerrard would rather face right now than 19th-placed Watford. We therefore fancy a home win in this game, featuring a few goals too, given that Gerrard’s side have scored and conceded in each of their last five home league games, which have contained a combined 20 goals.

Watford have yet to find the net under Hodgson but what they do have is a number of exciting attacking options, including Dennis and Ismaila Sarr; the latter is expected to return to the starting line-up, which will instantly enhance the club’s attacking output, he also scored in the reverse fixture as did Dennis.

Villa’s defence has been far from solid, conceding eight goals in their last three home games, but we still favour them in this one.

A home win and both teams to score is our pick at 11/4 (Bet365), while if you’re really backing the home triumph and goals count then you can find a Villa win and over 3.5 goals at 5.16/1 with SBK.