Extremadura vs Real Zaragoza Predictions

It’s been a reasonably pleasing campaign for Extremadura, who came up for Segunda B last season. Saturday’s hosts probably didn’t have eyes for anything other than survival at the start of the campaign, so it’s fair to say that Manuel Alfredo Mosquera Bastida’s men have done well. The job is far from complete, as they’re only five points clear of the drop, though they’ve been in excellent form of late, so they’ll fancy themselves to do enough to remain in the division.

From purely a results point of view, it’s tough to criticise the recent efforts of Extremadura, who’ve now won each of their last five, but it’s easy to feel that they’ve ridden their luck a tad during that time. Saturday’s hosts have won five on the bounce, but they’ve not been overly creative during that time, while they’ve been outperformed in terms of expected goals in four of those five.

Fortunately, the hosts have been reasonably solid at home since the turn of they year, so they’ll fancy themselves to get a good result on Saturday. Extremadura have kept a clean sheet in each of their last three at Estadio Francisco de la Hera, where they’ve shipped an average of just 0.88 goals in 2019. Furthermore, they’ve surrendered an average of only 1.06 expected goals, so there’s little doubt about their defensive quality. Going forward, they’ve not been immense, though as they’ve given such a small amount away, they’ve not needed to be.

Overall this season, Zaragoza haven’t been amazingly poor on the road, but they’ve certainly not impressed. They’ve won just five out of 18 away from home, while they’ve lost eight of the other 13.

Saturday’s visitors did recently beat Cordoba away from home, though their rather dodgy rear-guard prevented them from beating Cadiz previously, while they lost three on the bounce prior to that. Zaragoza have also struggled from a creativity point of view on the road, as they’ve been outperformed in terms of expected goals in eight of their nine travelling matches since the turn of the year. During that time, they’ve averaged a measly 1.0 expected goals for.

From a betting point of view, ‘Under 2.5 Goals’ catches the eye. It wouldn’t be too hard to get behind the hosts based on their defensive quality, though when we consider their defensive strength in conjunction with their attacking weakness, it’s easy to feel that the chances of a low-scoring game are greater than the current prices suggest. Quite simply with both teams offering a limited amount in their respective home and away games, as they average a combined 2.18 expected goals for, backing the goals to remain elusive at Estadio Francisco de la Hera is the way to go.