Aston Villa v Swansea: Lambert faces favoured opposition

Paul Lambert masterminded two victories over Swansea last season for Norwich and 5/4 seems a reasonable price that his winning streak continues against the Welsh outfit for Aston Villa.

In fact, Lambert has beaten Swansea in four of his five clashes with them as a coach, suggesting they may be ideal opposition as he seeks his first win as Aston Villa boss.

After a slow start to the season, Villa were much improved in their latest outing at Newcastle and with the international break offering a longer spell to transfer his ideas to the players, their chances of a victory must be enhanced.

Based on current form, Swansea should arguably be favourites for their trip to Villa Park, as they currently sit unbeaten in second spot behind 100 per cent starters Chelsea.

Swansea are 21/10 to beat Villa and they displayed their pace on the counter attack in their only previous away game when leaving QPR with a 5-0 success.

Summer signing Michu has proved particularly deadly since his arrival, with four goals from as many shots on target across the opening three games.

He will be a highly popular choice to find the target at any time in the 90 minutes at 11/5, while it is 7/1 that he bags the opener.

For Villa, the fixture could bring the debut of Christian Benteke, after his £7m move on deadline day from Belgian club Genk.

With Villa arguably in need of a striker of his size, he may even be thrown straight into the starting line up and if this is the case, then 8/1 would represent a big price that he opens the scoring.

Alternatively, Lambert could hand a first start of the season to Gabriel Agbonlahor, after he came on as a late substitute against Newcastle after a spell out injured and had a positive influence.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing