Bournemouth meet Aston Villa in a crucial Premier League showdown in the race for European qualification.
Victory will see Bournemouth stay eighth and in pole position to qualify for Europe should Crystal Palace fail to win the FA Cup next weekend.
Villa can climb to sixth with a win.
Team News
Dango Ouattara is ruled out for Bournemouth due to an adductor strain.
Luis Sinisterra (hamstring), Ryan Christie (groin) and Enes Unal (ACL) remain absent.
Villa will be without Youri Tielemans after the midfielder suffered a muscle injury this week.
Marcus Rashford remains absent with a hamstring injury which has kept him out of Villa’s last two matches.
When is Kick-Off?
Bournemouth host Villa at Vitality Stadium on Saturday 10 May at 5:30pm BST, live on Sky Sports in the UK.
Stat Attack
- Bournemouth have avoided defeat in six of their last eight meetings against Villa (W4, D2, L2).
- Villa have won just one of four previous Premier League trips to Bournemouth (W1, D1, L2).
- Villa’s Leon Bailey has scored in two of his last three appearances against Bournemouth.
- Six of Evanilson’s 10 league goals for Bournemouth this season were scored on his right foot.
- Villa have kept clean sheets in three of their last four top-flight away games (W3, L1).
Prediction
Although seven points separate Bournemouth and Villa ahead of kick-off, Bournemouth’s battle is realistically for eighth even though they need their next opponents – Manchester City to help them out by winning the FA Cup if an European spot is to go to the eighth-placed team.
Andoni Iraola’s Cherries though will be buoyed by their comeback at Arsenal where they looked solid defensively for much of the first half, yet were able to clinically move the attacking gears forward in a more confident second half which might need to be the case here if Villa come out on the front foot.
Villa meanwhile know that this is realistically do-or-die if want to put the pressure back on their top-five rivals after a clinical home victory over Fulham, yet Tielemans will be a huge miss in midfield given how integral he has been to Villa’s attack this season but Ross Barkley and John McGinn will fill that void well.
Either way both teams can’t afford to lose this game so I expect this to be scrappy and a draw seems like a fair call even if it doesn’t do much good for Bournemouth nor Villa.
Prediction: Bournemouth 1-1 Aston Villa
Result: Bournemouth 0-1 Aston Villa