Las Palmas-Villarreal PREVIEW

Villarreal have made the long trek to the Canary Islands to face Las Palmas, with the islanders needing three points to stay close to Levante in the quest to get Primera football for another year.

Las Palmas: Umm, the home side have not been great this year, obviously, but they have had a few decent results at home, including a controversial draw with Barcelona and a 2-1 win over Valencia. 4-2-7 at home might not be so bad if their away form (6 points from 14 matches) wasn’t so poor.

Jonathan Calleri leads the islanders with seven goals. Unfortunately, Jonathan Viera is now playing his trade in China, and Loic Remy is on loan to Getafe, and Gabriel Peñalba and Pedro Bigas are out.

The strength of Las Palmas lies in its back four—Alejandro Galvez and Ximo Navarro are a decent centerback pairing in particular.

Villarreal: We need goals!! Nicola Sansone returns to the squad for the first time in three months, so maybe that will help, and in some ways I fancy our chances against a side that has to attack to get three points rather than sit back and let us bring the game to them. We could really use a good match from our midfield—Castillejo and Fornals especially.

At the back, Mario Gaspar is out so Rukavina probably deputizes at right back.

All-time record: Villarreal is 1-1-2 in the islands in the Primera (4-0-1 at home). Won’t be as easy at the 4-0 win in the Ceramica for sure, but....

Prediction: I am going to channel one of our commenters and go for a 2-1 Villarreal win.