Premier League Top Midlands Club Odds 22/23: Back Brendan's Foxes at 11/8

Picking out your ante-post bets for the new season is one of the most enjoyable times of the year for punters, and with the range of markets at their disposal continuing to grow, the betting landscape continues to evolve and open up potentially profitable opportunities.  

The new Premier League season begins exactly one month today, and we’ve decided to focus our attention on the market for who will be the ‘Top Midlands Club’ in 2022/2023. This market will be settled on who finishes highest in the table out of Aston Villa, Leicester, Wolves and Nottingham Forest. 

Aston Villa - 5/4

At the head of the betting we have Aston Villa, who BetVictor have priced at 5/4 to be the Top Midlands club in the top-flight this season. Those odds imply a 44.4% chance that this selection will land, although we wouldn’t be in any hurry to take that price, which does look rather short in our opinion. 

Steven Gerrard took the reins at Villa in November and got off to a fast start winning three of his first four games in charge of the club. However, their form towards the back end of the campaign does lead to a few raised eyebrows when looking at their prices in various ante-post markets for the season ahead. Villa only managed 2 wins in their last 11 matches last term, with those two victories coming against relegated Burnley and Norwich. Despite the signing of Diego Carlos and the permanent addition of Philippe Coutinho, Villa look dangerously short at 5/4.

Leicester - 11/8

Next in the market we have Leicester City priced at 11/8 to be the Top Midlands Club this season. With Villa accounting for such a large proportion of the market (44.4%), we feel there’s plenty to like about the odds available on the Foxes here. 

Leicester have not finished outside the top-10 in the last five renewals of the Premier League with finishes of 9th, 9th, 5th, 5th, and most recently 8th in 2021/2022. Although last term may have felt a rather underwhelming campaign in comparison to some of those during the last decade for Leicester, they still managed to finish just four points behind West Ham, as well as having to compete in the Europa Conference League, where they reached the semi-finals.

Jamie Vardy has scored 13+ goals in the last seven Premier League season’s for Leicester and still managed 15 last term when missing nine league matches through injury. With no European distraction, Leicester look a fantastic price to crown themselves the Top Midlands club in this forthcoming campaign.

Wolves - 9/2

It was a funny old season for Wolves last season with the Black Country side having hopes of a European place for the first half of the campaign as they sat sixth going into December. There was a hint of fortune to those results in the first half of the season with Wolves overperforming their xG and thanks to a plethora of remarkable saves from goalkeeper Jose Sarr. 

At the back end of the campaign, Wolves were winless in their last seven matches and with Ruben Neves potentially on his way out of the club this summer, there’s a certain amount of uncertainty around Molineux at the moment. 9/2 looks the correct price here for Bruno Lage’s men, but we struggle to see them finishing higher in the table than Leicester. 

Nottingham Forest - 14/1

Rounding off the betting at 14/1 are Nottingham Forest who ended a 23 year period away from England’s top division after securing promotion via the play-offs. Steve Cooper galvanised the former European Cup winners last season after taking over at the end of September and boasts an impressive 60% win ratio from the 45 games he has taken control of across league and cup formats. 

Forest have already splashed £18m on Nigerian forward Taiwo Awoniyi from Union Berlin and right-back Giulian Biancone from Troyes, with more arrivals expected before the window closes on 3 September. The main objective for Cooper & Co this season will be to avoid relegation and at 14/1 we won’t be backing them to be the Top Midlands side on their first season back in the big-time.