Villarreal first and second teams open preseason with wins

Preseasons have different story arcs; in Villarreal's case, especially since we had a couple of matches in Australia after the La Liga season ended, we tend to start slow and build up over the course of the preseason.  So the results of early friendlies don't really matter much, though I remember feeling unease about our prospects in 2011-12 when we started off by losing to a bunch of Irish students (that was, of course, our relegation year).  So beginning on the winning note is a Good Thing.

Villarreal's first team defeated Reus Deportiu 1-0; Reus are in the Segunda B and have played (and will play again) our B team in the regular season.  The only goal came from Leo Baptistao early in the second half; other than that, Villarreal dominated but no no one's surprise heavy legs and unfamiliarity with each other made it difficult to create really good scoring chances.  Gerard Moreno fluffed the best one midway through the first half.

Our team was (first half): Barbosa; Mario, Pantic, V. Ruiz, Jokic; Pina, Trigueros; Alejo, Castillejo; Gerard y ‘Jony’ Pereira

Second half: Areola, Rukavina, Iñiguez, Bailly, Costa, Aleix, Bruno, Espinosa, Samu García, Fran Sol y Leo Baptistao.

Villarreal B defeated Real Betis B 2-1 in Murcia.  Their starting lineup was Aitor; Miguelón, Dan Ojog, Javi Ramírez, Carlos Julio; Joel, Cassano, Larrea, Javi García; Simón y Franco Acosta; Joel (in the 43rd minute) and Carlos Martinez (67th) scored the goals for us.

First team's next match is Wednesday vs Nastic Tarragona, newly promoted to the Segunda.  The B team will be in action that day as well, at Albacete.

Endavant Villarreal!!