Athletic Bilbao vs Eibar Predictions, Betting Tips and Match Previews

This promises to be a really competitive Basque derby. Eibar are having another good season and come into this match following three straight wins in all competitions. There is always a bit of extra motivation for them when they take on their big neighbours and they can’t have realistically gone to San Mames with a better chance of picking up a result. They are 1 point and 1 place better off than Athletic currently and have been scoring plenty of goals this term with an average of 1.54 per game in La Liga and they’ve only failed to score in one match so far.

Athletic haven’t been keeping that many clean sheets either. Both teams have scored in 69% of their league games this season and they don’t come into this game in the best of form in the league with just 1 win from their last 5 matches. Therefore, Eibar have plenty of hope here and their chances are greatly increased by the suspension of Athletic’s two best attacking players in Aritz Aduriz and Raul Garcia.

Between them they’ve scored over 50% of Athletic’s goals in La Liga this term. Both men have 5 league goals to their name and no other Bilbao player has scored more than once in La Liga this season, so their attacking threat is severely weakened here.

In terms of the likely line-ups for this match, Eibar are expected to name a team which has 13 league goals to its name while Athletic’s may have just 5. The hosts really don’t have anyone who can come in and do the same job those two players do and strength in depth has often been the problem for them, given the small pool of players they can potentially buy.

Eibar have already got a result at the Bernabeu this season and they haven’t been beaten by more than 1 goal in any match they’ve played this term so a close game is to be expected here and backing Double Chance – Draw or Eibar at 21/20 looks like the value bet.