Villarreal vs Barcelona: La Liga Gamethread

Barca have played twelve matches in our building in a row without defeat. We’ve faced them 24 times in a row without beating them. Not good. That said, we are facing the least talented, most dysfunctional Barcelona in years, and they are injury ridden to boot. In a normal year where Villarreal were performing to expectations, I would see this as a golden opportunity to put off all the bad long streaks.

As we all are painfully well aware, that is not the season we are having. We go into this match, and even though our prediction algorithm suggests we are heavy favorites in this one, I don’t think any of us are actually feeling that way. Barca are still very talented, and despite the uninspiring outings in Xavi’s first two matches at the helm it would be just like us to gift away a goal.

As ever, I’ll trust you guys to put in the lineups, as I am capping off my Thanksgiving weekend festivities here in the states I’ll unfortunately (or heck, maybe fortunately) missing the match.

It’s curious, we are actually in a fairly similar situation to Barcelona in that neither one of us are having a season that matches the expectations the fanbases have for them. If, somehow, we can get a win here we pull within one point of Barcelona in the standings that should get us right around the top half of the table. We could then get a quick breath of air against Victoria in the Copa and then Sevilla and Atalanta back to back. Frankly, by the time we roll in to face Rayo on the 12th of December the entire course of our season could be set in stone.

Thoughts?

(If you couldn’t see the Jamie Kemble video above it’s probably because Apple News stripped it out, because Apple is the worst.)