Eibar vs Athletic Bilbao Betting Tips

Eibar were relegated from La Liga in May but financial woes at Elche granted them a reprieve and incredibly 3 months on, the tiny mountain town club are top of the Primera Division after a 3-1 opening day win at Granada.

They will have enjoyed this week that is for sure as they look ahead to a derby with local rivals Athletic. After such an awful second half of last season and the gloom of relegation almost everyone had written Eibar’s chances off this term and perhaps that could work to their advantage. They may be able to once again play with the freedom they displayed during their shock promotion and early days in La Liga when they excelled against the odds. However the pressure of keeping up their good form seemed to get to José Luis Mendilibar’s side after January and now that is almost completely off again with the team odds on for the drop.

This is almost a no-win situation for Athletic Bilbao. They are often viewed as the symbol of the Basque country and along with Real Sociedad the only major footballing power in it. A game for Bilbao against a side from another Basque town of just 27,000 people, where many of the residents support Athletic shouldn’t really be a contest but all their players will know that defeat would mean embarrassment and a torrent of abuse in the local press.

So the pressure will be all on them despite the fact that they are away from home. All the Basque derbies last season were tight affairs with three ending all square and three ending in 1-0 wins. Eibar drew 0-0 away to Athletic in the early part of the season but were beaten 1-0 at home during their poor second half of the campaign.

That game also co-incided with Athletic’s good run so it wasn’t a big surprise but Eibar have every chance of picking up a result here given they will come into this game in much more confident mood and they have actually won their last two games in La Liga now, scoring 3 times on each occasion.

They are 3/4 to secure a result here which offers good value given they have home advantage and given Athletic have a host of injury problems. The likes of Iñaki Williams, Mikel San José, Xabier Etxeita, Ander Iturraspe, Jonas Ramalho and Iker Muniain could all be missing for the trip to Eibar and they’ve only had 3 days to recover from a nervy 1-0 win over Zilina in Europe on Thursday.

They may already be paying the price for having played so many competitive games with Europa League and Spanish Super Cup games providing a stern warm-up to the new La Liga campaign. Other than that brilliant Super Cup showing, they’ve not actually been that impressive and needed away goals to see off their Slovakian opponents in Europe and were beaten by Barcelona on the opening day.

Therefore you have to give Eibar every chance but given derbies are typically tight games, a draw is perhaps the most likely outcome. Eibar surprised everyone with their attacking display at Granada so this could be slightly more open than you might have thought however even with Athletic’s injury problems the points are likely to be shared and a 1-1 draw is available at 5/1.