Valencia vs Villarreal Betting Tips & Predictions

When Villarreal dropped out of the top flight a few years ago, Valencia must have thought the days of them being overshadowed by their much smaller neighbours in the Valencian community were over and unlikely to return. However this season again Villarreal are top dogs in the region with a 17 point advantage on Valencia in the league. They are on course for a top four finish and are also still in the Europa League and have a good chance of making the final after their late 1-0 win over Liverpool on Thursday night.

Valencia are in the better league form though with Villarreal having picked up just 1 point from their last 3 league matches. Recent defeats in the capital at Rayo Vallecano and Real Madrid were followed up by a 0-0 draw with Real Sociedad last weekend when they again rotated their team quite a bit with Europe in mind.

Meanwhile Valencia have staged a mini-revival of sorts since Gary Neville left the club. They’ve looked much better in the final third with 10 goals and 10 points coming from their last 4 league matches. Defensively they still look a bit frail though and they could easily have suffered defeat last weekend when they drew 2-2 at Getafe. They gifted the hosts several more good chances on top of the two they scored from and will need to defend considerably better against stronger opposition here.

They looked very good in their last home game though, a 4-0 win over Eibar with Paco Alcacer bagging a hat-trick and they are favourites to win this despite their inferior league position. Villarreal are 4 points clear of Celta Vigo in 5th so are still not guaranteed Champions League qualification via the league but with their final two games against a woefully out-of-form Deportivo and relegation threatened Sporting Gijon, they may well feel they can again afford to rest players here and prioritise their trip to Merseyside on Thursday.

That can only benefit Valencia especially given Villarreal’s back-up strikers, who have tended to play in the league in recent weeks, haven’t been as impressive as Bakambu and Soldado. With the quality in this Valencia side finally starting to show itself and the team looking to be enjoying their football again, backing Valencia to win at 23/20 might be the best approach here.