Barcelona vs Valencia Betting Tips

Valencia are winless in 11 league matches now, 8 of which have been under the stewardship of Gary Neville. They put in arguably their best performance under the Englishman on Sunday creating plenty of chances but still lost at home to Sporting Gijon. Alvaro Negredo, who Neville has rescued from the wilderness and promoted to the captaincy was culpable of missing 3 glorious chances.

Their form in the Copa del Rey has been good however and they’ve beaten top flight sides Granada and Las Palmas to progress. Perhaps their young squad is enjoying the reduction in pressure of playing in the cup but with their league campaign threatening to turn into an unlikely relegation battle, they may have to look to the cups to salvage any sort of pride.

Barcelona meanwhile just want to win everything and they have put out strong sides in this competition and will certainly go with a full-strength eleven for this Semi-Final. They weren’t anywhere near their best at the weekend as they limped to a 2-1 win against 9 man Atletico Madrid.

However against a Valencia side that is far less stubborn defensively they are unlikely to have as much difficulty forging openings and they’ve won all of their last 8 matches scoring twice or more in each of them. With Valencia looking much better in terms of creativity now, an away goal can’t be ruled out though and they may bring in top scorer Paco Alcacer for this game.

Barcelona have won despite conceding in all of their last 4 matches so odds of 7/4 here for a home win and both teams to score really do appeal. That is also true of their last 5 home Copa del Rey ties and they’ve racked up 3-1, 4-1 and 6-1 victories at the Camp Nou so far in this year’s competition.

Therefore odds of 11/1 for a 3-1 Barcelona win look good given Barca aren’t quite at their best right now and have had to cope with a lot of games in recent weeks and didn’t really get much of a winter break given their involvement in the FIFA World Club Cup.