Football Accumulator Tips: 5/1 Midlands Derby Bet Builder

Can you hear that? It's the collective jeers of football supporters and non-sports fans alike celebrating the end of international football for another six months.

We return to the Premier League this Saturday with seven matches taking place and plenty at stake for almost all involved. Arguably the pick of the 3pm kick-offs that day sees Wolves host Aston Villa in what has typically been an engaging affair in recent years.

European football is the aim for the hosts, who sit in 8th - 10 points clear of their Midlands counterparts in 9th. For Villa a top half finish seems the best case scenario but don't expect a Steven Gerrard-led team to be on the beach before the season is over.

We've gone with a card and shot on target double as our selections for this week's Saturday Bet Builder, courtesy of @LAHamalam. At the time of writing, the bet currently pays best at 5/1 with Paddy Power and you can back it directly below.

As I'm sure you're already aware, matches between Wolves and Villa have recently had a certain bite to them. Since Fosun International completed their takeover over at Molineux and AVFC were relegated to the English second tier for the first time in their history, the playing field has been levelled between the two clubs and that real competitive streak has found itself deeply rooted in just about every meeting from the 2016/17 season onwards.

This has typically resulted in slogging matches with cards given out left, right and centre. One man who knows this all too well - particularly this season - is Tyrone Mings.

Aston Villa's captain and towering defender is close to eclipsing his highest cautioned season as a professional footballer, having managed one card more than he's currently on now in 13 games more at Ipswich in the rough and tumble of the Championship during the 14/15 campaign.

He sits at the top of the disciplinary table alongside Wolves' Ruben Neves and Leeds' Junior Firpo, having all individually accrued nine yellow cards so far.

And that's just the beginning of Mings' numbers in this department! Having played a total of 2,378 PL minutes during this term, the 29-year-old is averaging a booking every 264 minutes which works out at just under one in every three games.

Since the claret and blues regained promotion to the promised land back in 2019, no player past or present has received more bookings (20) than TM during this time!

He's managed three in his last five for Villa and Saturday's opponents are a team who have provided him some problems in the past. The skipper has been entered into the referee's book on three of his last five occasions vs Wolves, including the October meeting where he played a prominent role in the visitors' 3-2 comeback at Villa Park.

As a single, Mings is best priced at 3/1 with Paddy Power to be booked in this game, with other bookies like bet365 going as short as 7/4 for the selection.

For the second part of our bet builder, we're keeping it Villa themed and dipping into the shots on target market. Here, we like the look of a certain Brazilian to test Jose Sa's goal and these numbers support our argument very well.

Images of Philippe Coutinho smiling gleefully in Brazil's training camp paints a thousand words. The 29-year-old Barcelona loanee is finally enjoying his football again after a torrid spell in Catalonia, with Villa fans being the first to tell you of just how magical it is to watch.

Villa's number 23 joined B6 in January and laid down a real marker when he almost singlehandedly turned a 2-0 deficit to Man Utd on its head in his debut appearance from the subs bench at Villa Park.

Having made 10 appearances for the club now, he has already had the fifth-highest number of shots (25) and  third-highest number of shots on target (11) for his new club this season!

More importantly, the Brazilian has managed at least one SOT in eight of these matches, leaving it late into injury time to register one in his last outing vs Arsenal.

It's also worth noting that he has recorded at least one in each of his last five matches, coming against Brighton, Southampton, Leeds, West Ham and the aforementioned Gunners.

Paddy Power are also best priced for this pick, going 1/2 for him to have 1+, while the likes of William Hill and Bet Victor have him slightly lower at 7/20 and 4/9 respectively.