Aston Villa at Wigan: Three away points the banker bet of the day

Wigan are bottom of the table for many reasons and one of those is why I don't particularly like the idea of Martinez as manager of Aston Villa and also why we will get three points today.

Wigan is the win out of four for Alex McLeish and it is playing teams like Wigan that keep him in a job and it is why if you were having a bet today you can stick it on Aston Villa.

A trained monkey could get three points against Wigan today and I know I've said this before about this manager, but he doesn't need to turn up today. But here you go, wait for someone to say 'all games in the Premier League are tough'.

And to some extent that is true, they are tough. Just like actually, playing a team from the League Two is tough, but you do not lose to the favorites for relegation when they have only one once all season at home. You go to that team, attack, score goals and leave with three points.

Updates, team news and banter

So, you can probably tell that I'm a little confident about today and I see this as a win and it should be. If we don't win though, nothing will happen - we have an owner that knows nothing about football and supporters actually applauding McLeish. But you can live in hope.

But we will win, just because we have better players that can fight just a little bit harder than the Wigan players. Martinez has a team set up to 'play' football and when you come up against a group of players that can do that and fight, there is only going to be one winner and that will not be the home team.

Sure, they could surprise, but if they did, would you really, hand on hear, be surprised that we lost or didn't win? Or would you secretly be expecting it or thinking it can happen?

I guess what I'm saying is, we will win by default today only because we are two sides that are going nowhere - in fact some might even say that we are catching up with Wigan - or we are just going to end up like Wigan. That is what Lerner wants and if nothing changes, he will get exactly what he wants.

Updates and all that as they come in today. I'm off for a bacon sandwich. Back in an hour or so.

Odds

The players

Given, Hutton, Collins, Cuellar, Warnock, Albrighton, Bannan, Gardner, Gabby, Bent and Keane start. On the bench we have Guzan, Herd, Ireland, Heskey, Baker, N’Zogbia and Weimann.