Villarreal at Granada: La Liga Gamethread

Well, Gerard Moreno scored for Spain during the international break, so I reckon he’s healthy. That’s great news for us, of course, and terrible news for Granada. This post is going up very early my time tomorrow, so I won’t come back and check the lineups before it posts (when you have three small kids in the house you sleep as much as they’ll let you), so drop those in the comments if you will. I know Pervis Estupinan picked up a muscle injury the other day so he’ll be out.

In the reverse fixture of this one, I actually remember both goals we conceded very clearly without having to look up the highlights. Roberto Soldado caught a long ball over the top in a situation where he beat Raul Albiol in a footrace to score their first goal, and Kenedy did some unreal FIFA video game crap to score their second. We were without Gerard but still managed two of our own.

We can’t have a draw this time around. There’s just no room for it. If we win this one, we put to bed any likely chance of anyone behind us catching us, meanwhile Real Sociedad have a big derby on Wednesday right after their Copa Del Rey final tomorrow. After all the emotion of tomorrow’s match a draw Wednesday wouldn’t shock me, and if Real Sociedad drop points we’d be level on them or better.

Real Betis have Elche on Sunday, which honestly feels like just the kinda match Real Betis would bungle in the past, but I don’t really expect them to drop points. We gotta win to keep pace.