Saturday football acca: Everton’s woes to continue, Ipswich to continue flying start, and more…

Tipstrr writer
18 August 2023

As another exciting football weekend beckons, Rhys Tovey, who runs his AGF football service on Tipstrr, has been busy picking his best bet from each of the top four English divisions.

Backing wins for Aston Villa, Ipswich, Portsmouth and Notts County, AGF 's four selections build a tasty accumulator which has combined odds just shy of 7/1 at the time of writing.

Saturday acca from AGF

Aston Villa vs Everton (Premier League)

It was a disastrous opening day of the season for Aston Villa, losing 5-1 at Newcastle, but as poor as the result was, they were actually in the game for large spells.

The Villa defence completely fell apart towards the end when they were chasing the game and were punished by a very good Newcastle outfit.

Everton don't have much quality going forward at all and, despite Tyrone Mings' injury being a huge blow for Villa, there's a clear gulf in quality between these two teams.

The Toffees were very unfortunate to lose to Fulham, having created more than enough good chances to pick up three points.

Their lack of quality up front was highlighted perfectly in that game, with Neal Maupay, who scored one goal last season, accumulating more xG than any other Premier League player in Gameweek 1.

Even with Villa's defensive struggles, I'm not sure Everton have the quality to really trouble them here.

The Birmingham-based club have won seven Premier League home games in a row and will be looking for a reaction to their opening day defeat.

Since gaining promotion back to the Premier League four years ago, Aston Villa have won six and drawn two of their matches against Everton, including winning all of the last four.

QPR vs Ipswich Town (Championship)

Ipswich have started life back in the Championship strongly, winning both of their opening games. A very impressive win away from home at playoff semi-finalists Sunderland was followed up by a comfortable win at home to Stoke.

They travel to Loftus Road at the weekend to face a QPR side that I've tipped to go down this season (full season previews for each division can be found on AGF's Tipstrr page).

After a tumultuous summer, they began the season with a 4-0 defeat at Watford, and while they did follow that up with a win at Cardiff, they also conceded 2.06 xG.

Ipswich are a far stronger team than Cardiff and should have no problem creating chances against a QPR side that has only won one of their last fifteen competitive home games.

Portsmouth vs Cheltenham Town (League One)

Portsmouth have carried their good form from last season into the new campaign, picking up seven points from their opening three games.

Wins against Exeter and Leyton Orient, and a draw against a good Bristol Rovers side, have extended their unbeaten run in the league to fourteen matches.

They're up against a Cheltenham team who have lost all three of their opening games and are the only side in the division yet to score a goal.

They lost on Tuesday to a Reading side who hadn't won a league match since February and who are a class below Portsmouth.

Reading's previous league win took place on the exact same day Cheltenham last played Portsmouth, in which Pompey ran out comfortable 4-0 winners.

Doncaster Rovers vs Notts County (League Two)

Notts County came up into the Football League with lots of hype and expectation but have had a fairly mixed start to the season.

They were thrashed 5-1 by Sutton on the opening day, although that was partly down to a 15th-minute red card, then beat a solid Grimsby team at home before a lacklustre 0-0 away at Morecambe, whom they dominated but struggled in front of goal.

I'm banking on them finding some goalscoring form when they travel to Doncaster, who picked up their first point on Tuesday against a very good Mansfield team.

However, Mansfield dominated the game and, on another day, would have won based on the chances they had. Doncaster's other two league games have been defeats to Harrogate and Newport, two sides who are unlikely to be challenging towards the top end of the table come the end of the season.

Notts County need to improve if they want to challenge for promotion this season, and this is the perfect game for them to get their campaign going.