On Thursday CSKA hosts Villa with a 1-1 current aggregate.
Somewhat surprisingly Martin O'Neill has left out almost all their star players at home instead deciding to concentrate on the league and the possible lucrative Champions League spot (good chance they won't even progress into the champions league proper anyways...but I digress). Gareth Barry, Agbonlahor, Young, Heskey, Petrov, Cuellar, Milner and so on will miss. Only a few regular starters will play, the back line looks ok but the attacking nucleus is gone.
Bottom line is this would be a very difficult game for a full-strength Villa side but now it appears to be almost a foregone conclusion. With the Russian league yet to start CSKA will have full focus on progressing.
imo Comfortable victory for the Moscow side. I took -3/4 at -120ish.
Somewhat surprisingly Martin O'Neill has left out almost all their star players at home instead deciding to concentrate on the league and the possible lucrative Champions League spot (good chance they won't even progress into the champions league proper anyways...but I digress). Gareth Barry, Agbonlahor, Young, Heskey, Petrov, Cuellar, Milner and so on will miss. Only a few regular starters will play, the back line looks ok but the attacking nucleus is gone.
Bottom line is this would be a very difficult game for a full-strength Villa side but now it appears to be almost a foregone conclusion. With the Russian league yet to start CSKA will have full focus on progressing.
imo Comfortable victory for the Moscow side. I took -3/4 at -120ish.
