Aston Villa kick off the Steve Bruce era with a visit of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Ian Holloway is expecting Wolverhampton Wanderers to spoil Steve Bruce’s Aston Villa coronation by earning a 1-1 draw on Saturday evening.
Wolves make the trip across the West Midlands for what is shaping up to be an interesting clash at Villa Park.
It will be Bruce’s first match as Aston Villa manager after he was named as Roberto Di Matteo’s successor this week.
The former Hull City boss, who has won promotion to the Premier League on four occasions, has a big job on his hands as the Villans lie 19th in the Championship after picking up just won league victory from their first 11 games.
But with 10 points separating them from the top six, and well over half the season left to go, Di Matteo probably did not inflict irreversible damage on Aston Villa’s playoff hopes.
And although Holloway claims that Bruce is one of his heroes in football, the Sky Sports pundit does not believe the resurgence will start this weekend as he tips Wolves – who bring back-to-back defeats into the contest – to earn a point.
“Steve Bruce is one of my heroes. He’ll get Villa moving forward in a way that only he knows how to. He’s got more experience in that department than Roberto Di Matteo had, who had been working at a different type of level with a different remit.
“Bruce will assess where the strengths and weaknesses in that squad lie immediately because he’d have been watching their bad start. When I look at Aston Villa’s squad, it’s a bit of a mismatch of who is going to play where.
“Whether he can get a win in his first game, which is a tough local derby, is another matter. Despite them losing their last three games, I liked the look of Wolves against Norwich, especially in the second half, and this is a team that have beat both Newcastle and Brentford this season.”
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