La Liga Matchday 20: Odds and Predictions

As we begin the second half of the league season, we’re coming off another 5/10 week. Because our model relies heavily on xG, I think key players being absent causes significant issues to some of our predictions. For instance, Vinicius Jr directly contributes 0.57 xG per 90 through his shot attempts and shot creations, not counting his xGBuildup which comes from him being in the middle of most of Madrid’s attacks down the left. Take that out due to COVID and they should probably beat Getafe anyway but it definitely changes the equation of the match, but our prediction is just relying on the last five results where Vinicius Jr did play so we miss it.

Matchday 20

@analyticslaliga

This prediction model completely ignores our Copa Del Rey match against Sporting, which it should, but it also predicts our xG on the assumption of having Samu and Dia available, so us being favored that heavily against Atleti is probably a bit off to say the least. In big, big news, Levante is favored to win a match! I really hope they do, I hate seeing their fans having to go through what this season has been for them. Real Madrid is massively favored against Valencia, but they do seem to find a way of screwing up matches against them and haven’t been at peak form lately so that one will be interesting as well.

We’ll cover this more in our matchday preview, but we desperately need Danjuma back right away if we are going to keep our form going. Overall though, should be another great week in La Liga.