Another wild jornada in La Liga

If you thought the Villarreal-Barcelona match was exhausting, later matches involving the relegation possibles were hardly less so!

Athletic Bilbao took an early 2-0 lead against Levante, but in the second half the granotes played much better, got an early penalty to open their scoring and equalized from a corner kick on the stroke of 90 minutes. The bench celebrated wildly, but within seconds a Bilbao attack resulted in a penalty to the home side, which Muinain converted. 3-2 win for Athletic Club, who have 32 points from 16 matches under Gaizka Garitano and are now eighth, threatening the European spots.

Rayo Vallecano took a lead before halftime against Eibar, but couldn’t hold it. Charles (who is having a great season for Eibar, with 12 goals) equalized and then Pedro Léon won it.

The wildest match was the one at a packed El Alcoraz, where Huesca hosted Celta. The visitors took a two-goal lead, with first Brais Mendez and then Iago Aspas finding the target. But Huesca came back with three goals in 10 minutes to take a 3-2 lead, and they couldn’t hold that either, Aspas setting up Ryan Boudebouz for a richochet off a defender and past Santamaria. A bit surprising that Aspas came out after that with 10 minutes left; Huesca threw everything at Celta and really should have won—Enric Gallego missed an open net and then had a shot saved on the stroke of time by the keeper.

Leganes—Real Valladolid was less exciting, but deep, deep, deep into injury time, the home side scored to send their fans (and Villarreal fans following the match too, as far as I could tell from my twitter feed) into ecstasy. With Lega now on 39 points, surely they will be safe for another year.

Valladolid were six points ahead of Villarreal when their match finished goalless on February 8; this is the second time we have pulled even with them, but we haven’t been able to get our nose in front of them yet to render the tiebreak irrelevant.

This weekend:

Saturday Girona-Espanyol, Rayo Vallecano-Valencia

Sunday Real Valladolid-Sevilla, Celta-Real Sociedad, Levante-Huesca, Betis-VILLARREAL