Athletic Bilbao vs Espanyol Betting Tips

They have been in excellent form of late and are making strong progress both at home and in Europe after a sluggish opening few weeks. Thursday night’s 5-1 home win over Partizan Belgrade in the Europa League made it 4 consecutive wins in all competitions for the Basque club and they have won all of them by 2 or more goals.

Athletic are looking good at both ends of the pitch and might just be contenders for that 4th Champions League place which appears to be very much up for grabs this season. Youngster Inaki Williams is providing the prolific Aritz Aduriz with some valuable support in the goals department and they have the best goalscoring record outside of the top three. Meanwhile at the other end they are improving and have only conceded twice in their last 4 matches.

Espanyol look to be muchlike they were last year, a typical mid-table side who are in store for a safe but unremarkable campaign. They are currently in 10th place with 4 wins and 5 defeats from their opening 10 games.

They’ve only won 1 of their last 5 though and failed to beat a poor Granada side at home last time out and were convincingly beaten 3-0 by Rayo Vallecano in their last away match.

4 of their 5 defeats have been by 2 or more goals and only bottom club Levante has a worse defensive record than Espanyol this term. Therefore you have to fancy an in-form and free-scoring Athletic Bilbao side to win this fairly comfortably. You can back them at 7/10 with a -1 Asian Handicap and that seems like an excellent bet given it is very hard to see them not winning the game.

They don’t keep a huge number of clean sheets though, so perhaps Espanyol will nick a goal at some point in the game and if you’re looking for a correct scoreline bet, it might be worth going for a 3-1 home win at 11/1.