Villarreal vs Athletic Bilbao Betting Tips

Villarreal are usually very strong at El Madrigal and won 12 times there last season including a 2-0 win over Athletic Bilbao. They have also made a good start to this campaign, taking 7 points from their opening 3 matches and winning the last two at home to Espanyol and away to Granada both by 3-1 scorelines, which in what has been a very tight league so far, represent big wins.

Athletic Bilbao got their league season up and running last weekend with a victory at home to Getafe but had lost both their opening games against Barcelona and Eibar and appear to have suffered a bit of a hangover from their surprise Spanish Super Cup success. This will be another tough test for them and they are still likely to be without a number of players including Iker Muniain, Iñaki Williams and Ander Iturraspe.

Both sides were involved in Europa League action in midweek. Villarreal made 10 changes for their trip to Vienna to play Rapid, clearly prioritising the league game, which they didn’t always do last season. They slipped to a 2-1 defeat but are likely to be back at full strength for this game. Athletic were slight less experimental in their line-up as the prolific Aritz Aduriz scored twice in a 3-1 home win over Augsburg only 4 days after after having done likewise in the league at San Mames.

However Athletic and Aduriz don’t tend to travel quite as well and are yet to win any of their 4 away games this season. Villarreal should have the fresher legs and have been playing well so at Evens, you have to fancy a home win here and a continuation of their excellent start to the season.

Villarreal have scored and conceded in all of their games so far, so they clearly aren’t quite at their best defensively right now but they are yet to concede more than once. These two are quite evenly matched and only 1 place separated them last season so although we can see Villarreal winning it is likely to be close. Consider backing a 2-1 home win at 15/2 if you are looking for a correct score bet.