We said: Aston Villa 1-2 Manchester City
City may have produced a number of goal-laden performances against Villa down the years, but this will be no cakewalk for the champions as the Gerrard revolution aims to gather momentum.
Guardiola's hand may be forced in a fatigued attack, but the visitors should still have enough to take all three points back to the Etihad.
Read more.Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Manchester City win with a probability of 68.81%. A draw had a probability of 18.5% and a win for Aston Villa had a probability of 12.66%.
The most likely scoreline for a Manchester City win was 0-2 with a probability of 11.74%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 0-1 (10.65%) and 1-2 (9.69%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (8.79%), while for an Aston Villa win it was 1-0 (3.99%). The actual scoreline of 1-2 was predicted with a 9.7% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole correctly predicted a 1-2 win for Manchester City in this match and our data analysis correctly predicted the win for Manchester City.