Villarreal at SD Leioa: Copa Del Rey Preview

The thing about football seasons is they just don’t wait for anyone. As the club reels from the loss of Iborra, they are nonetheless immediately thrown into yet another midweek match in a completely different competition, this time our first Copay Del Rey matchup of the season. Expect heavy, heavy rotation for this one as our banged up first team squad struggles with an onslaught of injuries. Hopefully our superior quality makes up for the fact that this is a bigger match for our opponents than it is for us.

Our Opponents

SD Leioa is next to last in their Segunda B group, with only 6 points from 8 matches and a negative goal differential. To put it bluntly they are almost certainly worse than our own B side. Even playing an XI of entirely squad players, we should have more than enough quality to dominate this match and get a win. No excuses. The match will be played at the 3700 seat Estadio Sarriena in the Bilbao metro area of the Basque Country. The third tier is the highest this club has ever been.

Villarreal

I really have no clue just how rotated we’ll be for this one, but here’s my guess:

lineupbuilder.com

Prediction

Even in the very likely case where the lineup predicted above is wrong, I think we’ll be rotated enough that we have players who aren’t very used to playing together on the pitch. Because of this, I think we’ll actually concede a goal but win anyway 3-1.