La Liga: Real Madrid vs. Valencia

Posted on | March 21, 2008 | No Comments

Real Madrid go into this game knowing the result of the Barcelona Valladolid game, and will more than likely know that their seven point gap will have been whittled down to four points. A win here for Madrid is vital for their title chances, and will also help to take some strain off the team and coach Bernd Schuster. The fact is that they haven’t been playing very well at all, and their poor form was very much in evidence last weekend when they lost at Riazor to Deportivo de la Coruña. It was Madrid’s worst performance of the season and they couldn’t even manage one shoot on goal in the entire match. That defeat brought to an abrupt end a two ban winning streak, and if they aren’t careful here they could lose again.
Valencia meanwhile are surprisingly in the final of the King’s cup after beating Barcelona at the Mestalla stadium in Thursday night by three goals to two. The Spanish domestic cup competition seems to be coach Ronald Koeman’s only way of getting to the UEFA cup this year but they still have to beat a well organized Getafe side in the final. In the league, things are going form bad to worse and they haven’t won a game in the last five tries. Koeman has the worst league record of any new coach by winning just two league matches from sixteen games, and I doubt whether he will be able to coax a good performance out of his players at the Bernabeu stadium. The last time the two sides played was in October when Madrid thrashed Valencia by five goals to one at Mestalla, but I don’t think that result will repeat itself again. Van Nistelrooy has been operated on to correct his ankle and will be out for at least six weeks, and his replacement, Roberto Soldado, isn’t a striker of any guarantee. The good news for Real is that Guti should be able to play and Robben is back in the starting lineup.
Valencia have recuperated Morientes from his long injury, but his appearance didn’t do much to stop Sevilla taking all three points from Mestalla last weekend. It seems that Valencia have more or less given up on the league, preferring to concentrate all their energies on the cup. Not a wise thing to do, as even though they are eleventh in the league, they are just four points from the relegation zone, and after this match they could be in a much worse situation.
Prediction: Home win (3-1)

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5. La Liga: Real Madrid vs. Barcelona

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