Malaga vs Deportivo La Coruna Predictions

Things didn’t go to plan for Malaga on Tuesday evening. Despite leading twice, first after 18 minutes and then after 37, the highest play-off finishers came unstuck, as they lost by four goals to two. After that result, Juan Ramón López Muñiz’s men have it all to do on Saturday evening.

Given that they were facing a side that had been very, very strong away from home, a side that they’d failed to beat in two attempts during the regular season, it wasn’t difficult to see Depor having a tough evening on Tuesday, though that wasn’t the case, as they delivered a timely high-quality performance.

Instead of setting out to dominate proceedings with the ball, Depor adopted a slightly more pragmatic approach, which allowed them to hit Malaga on the counter. As they created 2.22 expected goals for and found the net on four occasions, such an approach paid dividends.

While Depor made light work of creating scoring opportunities, Malaga weren’t overly impressive in the final third, despite scoring twice. Their first goal came from a pleasing cross, though they required a wonder strike from Javier Ontiveros for them to notch a second time. Aside from that, Tuesday’s visitors failed to carve out anything clear-cut, as an expected goals for total of 0.67 suggests.

Malaga are one of Segunda’s better teams on home soil; they ended the regular campaign having won 12, drawn four and lost five of their 21 home games, while they scored 28 goals and conceded only 14 goals. Such a record is reasonably impressive, but thanks to the aggregate score-line, this game could still be problematic for the hosts, who’ve given themselves something of a mountain to climb.

Given that they’re a good side at home, it’s not surprising that Malaga come into this game as favourites, though considering how the game panned out on Tuesday, it’s easy to feel that the hosts are slightly short. Similarly, Depor look somewhat overpriced. Not only did the visitors win on Tuesday, but they’ve now avoided defeat in each of three games against Malaga this season.

What’s more, as we saw in the first leg, Depor, who ended the regular season with the third-best defensive record on the road, look comfortable allowing Malaga onto them before pouncing on the counter, so it would no surprise to see Jose Marti Soler’s men thrive in this second leg. Frankly, given everything we know about the two teams and what we saw when they met just a few days ago, Depor have a better chance of avoiding defeat, so ‘Deportivo +1 Handicap’ offers punters a slice of value.