Villarreal vs Barcelona Preview

Barcelona will be looking to build on their recent impressive run of form in La Liga as they visit struggling Villarreal in this game.

The hosts have had an underwhelming season despite having played well in the Europa League this season.  They have failed to turn up in the league and could be relegated from the Spanish top flight at the end of this season.

Villarreal were 2-0 up against Celta Vigo in their last league game but ended up losing the game 3-2 to place themselves in a difficult position to avoid the drop.

Barcelona on the other hand have won their last 6 league games on the trot and come into this game 10 points clear at the top of the La Liga table.

They have had to rely on the brilliance of Lionel Mess to get through most of their games and the Argentine hasn’t disappointed them so far, netting a late double to help them edge out City rivals Espanyol in their last league game.

Villarreal have been scoring goals regularly and prior to their capitulation at Celta, they were on a 4 games winning streak, so they will be looking to cause an upset by winning this game.

Barcelona have won the last four head-to-head meetings between these sides.

Bookmakers have priced Barcelona up as odds-on favourites to come out on top however the odds are relatively close considering Villarreal’s struggles.  Barcelona have much less to play for as their La Liga title is all but theirs while Villarreal need to win to keep their season alive.

Goal markets point to an exciting game as over 2.5 goals is currently trading odds-on while Lionel Messi is favourite to score the opening goal of the game followed by Luis Suarez and Kevin-Prince Boateng.

This game gets underway at 20:30 BST.

Other fixtures taking place this week in the Spanish Primera:

Spanish Primera Table

Spanish Primera Results