Villarreal vs Real Betis: La Liga Preview

Let’s be honest, this fanbase needs a shot in the arm. It’s not just about what the team needs in terms of table position when we go to play Betis tomorrow, we’re all tired of giving things away late, running into draws, and having near misses against opposition we outplay. It’s only October (and just barely, at that) and yet the season already feels long and exhausting. We’re looking up at Betis in the table, and even if we win we win we’ll be behind them, but it’d definitely be a start.

Our Opponents

We’ve gone 6-4-3 in our last 13 matches with Betis, though we did lose to them back in February in an incredibly stupid game where a legitimate goal from Dani Raba late got waved off. Real Betis have never, ever beaten us twice in a row in La Liga history.

New man Willian Jose is off to a fantastic start in his first season at Betis, but the guy who makes me nervous is Nabil Fekir. He has that mercurial sort of quality to his game where he could vanish for an hour and then all the sudden produce something so stunningly sublime that it decides the match in an instant.

Villarreal

Wanna know something stupid? If Villarreal avoid loss in this match it’ll be our longest unbeaten start the club has ever had in the top flight. The only other club in La Liga history to have four goalless draws in their first six matches is Real Sociedad. They’ve done it twice, in the late 60s and early 70s.

The rate at which we draw matches would be hilarious if it were happening to anyone else. I think, after this upcoming international break, we’ll be pretty close to healthy for once, but in this one we are still probably going to be missing Samu and Gerard.

Prediction

Our prediction algorithm has us winning this one. I tend to agree. We’ve played really really well in the last week against better competition than this so if we just bring the same intensity we’ll take care of business here. 3-1 win Villarreal.