Premier League best bets: Liverpool and Chelsea headline mid-week action

It's Matchday 22 of the Premier League season and we’re back after a quick break for the fourth round of England’s FA Cup. 

(A quick recap: Manchester United conceded two goals to fourth-division Newport County, Wolves and West Brom had their match suspended for serious crowd trouble and Maidstone United became the first club from outside England’s top five divisions to reach the fifth round of the cup since 1978.) 

We’ve got a lot to catch up on, so this will be a busy week of Premier League action: We’ll have a full suite of games on Tuesday and Wednesday followed by a regular weekend schedule on Saturday and Sunday.

We received some interesting news during the Premier League’s absence: Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp announced that he’d be stepping down at the end of the 2023-24 season. The irrepressible German cited fatigue as his main reason for leaving, adding that he planned on spending time with his family rather than moving quickly into a new coaching position. But with lots of top global clubs, including Barcelona and Bayern Munich, expecting vacancies around the time of Klopp’s departure, we expect he’ll be fielding plenty of phone calls during the early days of his break.

Klopp is a Liverpool legend, of course, and he will be sorely missed. But will his pending departure affect Liverpool’s title challenge this season? We’ll get our first taste of an answer this weekend when Liverpool takes on Chelsea at home.

Here are some of the bets we’re keeping an eye on during Matchday 22:

Aston Villa vs. Newcastle. The (many) Premier League breaks we’ve had since the holiday season have taken some of the steam out off Aston Villa’s impressive run, but the Villans are still in fourth, level on points with title contenders Arsenal. The Birmingham-based team has bolstered its campaign with its impressive home form — Aston Villa hasn’t lost at home in the league since nearly a year ago, when it fell 4-2 to Arsenal last February.

We’re big fans of Villa here, but we have a feeling that home record might come to a screeching halt this weekend. Newcastle is coming to town, after all, and Newcastle has had Villa’s number in recent years; it beat the Villans 5-1 in the opening game of the season and racked up an additional two wins back in 2022. At +275, we think betting on Newcastle to shock the Villans at home might pay dividends. For slightly longer odds, consider betting on Newcastle to win while both teams score — that one’s available at +450.