Villarreal vs Valencia Preview

Villarreal and Valencia square up in this all Spanish encounter when they take to the field here.

Villarreal have the big matter of relegation staring them in the face in La Liga, yet they have continue to impress in the Europa League.

At the weekend they suffered yet another blow in their bid to avoid being relegated at the end of this season when they lost 2-1 to Real Sociedad.

That loss leaves them 18^th in the league table and 3 points away from safety.  They haven’t had problems scoring goals recently, but the rate at which they also concede goals has been the major issue for them.

They have to tighten things at the back before they can look at getting another win before the season ends.

Valencia are making a late attempt to finish inside the top four like they did last season but their momentum was halted temporarily at the weekend when they surprisingly lost 2-0 to Rayo Vallecano.

That result leaves them 6^th in the league table and 4 points off fourth position.  They take on Levante and Real Betis in their next two league games so they should be confident of victory in at least one of those games.

Valencia have been in fine form and were on a run of 17 games without a defeat before their most recent slip-up, so fans will expect them to get things together and bounce back here again.

At present 1/20th of a point separates these two sides with bookmakers.  At time of publication (09/04/2019: 20:00), Valencia are ever so slight favourites (2.75) to come out on top in this opening leg however an insignificant amount of money would see Villarreal (2.80) start the game as favourites.

Oddsmakers are more confident this game will be low scoring as under 2.5 goals is currently trading odds-on while Carlos Bacca is favourite to score the opening goal of the game closely followed by Karl Toko Ekambi and Moreno Gerard.