Villarreal at SD Leioa: Copa Del Rey Gamethread

I probably won’t be able to watch this match today because my internet speed is usually directly in proportion to the weather here and the weather here is awful today, but I’ll drop our lineup in anyway. As I write this, Valencia is down 2-0 and playing with ten men losing to a fourth tier side, which, funny as it is also stands as a reminder to take no one lightly in a cup competition.

Okay, I’ll come out and admit it... when I did my match preview I totally forgot that Chakla existed, so he wasn’t in my predicted XI. He should be fine for this match though. I’m pretty surprised to see Mario starting, he’s piled up a lot of minutes this season, but we don’t have huge number of RB options and I guess Emery didn’t want to call anyone up (there may be rules on how many B team registered players you can play in the Copa, someone help me out there). Rulli, Foyh, Yeremi, Alex, and Fer were all definitely going to play today, I expect we’ll see Jaume Costa as a DM (which may be something we have to get used to) and I’m very happy for Dani Raba that he got the go ahead in this one.

The dangerous aspect of this lineup is that it’s very, very attacking. We don’t have a lot of steel in the middle of the park so we will need to be extremely careful on counter attacks. Hopefulyl though, we’ll have smooth sailing.