Valencia | CD Alaves |
Valencia CF suffered an embarrassing loss in midweek against an Osasuna side that made us look like Division 2 team. Sure Valencia CF had slightly more possession and through Guedes we mustered up several chances, but Osasuna played like a team, they defended all together and did it really well and move up the field together.
The two goals Osasuna scored in the first half were the usual blunders that Valencia CF players do in defense, or the minimal pressure they do when they track a player. Valencia CF as usual went down 1-0, then bounced back with a goal and again through a defensive blunder gave away Osasuna a second goal.
You just can't win games when opponents don't even have to outplay you to score, when you just give them goals for free, that is what is happening every match with Valencia CF, our players are giving away goals for free. Doesn't matter that we score more than Osasuna, doesn't matter that we have more ball possession than Osasuna, doesn't matter if we have more overall shots, etc... Osasuna doesn't gift their opponents free goals that they can't overcome later and lose the matches.
In the second half two more defensive blunders, first Molina handles the ball with his hand, its a soft penalty, they shouldn't have even used VAR for this, but it shows the ball hits him in the hand and a penalty was awarded. Jaume saves, this is a giant confidence boost for the team, everyone is pumped up and this might even give the team the added boost to go for another goal and rescue a draw here, but Diakhaby had other plans. Not to be outdone by Mollina, he had to be the most error prone defender this game as well, so literally 1 minutes after the previous penalty he handles the ball with his hand and a new penalty is given, this time Jaume with no chance to save it.
That is Valencia CF right now! That is what we are dealing with, no wonder we are 14th place on the table and could possibly drop even more!
Tomorrow we play against Deportivo Alaves and its a crucial match for Valencia CF, as relegation has not been statistically avoided, we are relatively "safe", but we are not historically safe, we need 40 points to be secure from relegation for sure and a loss or even a draw tomorrow would bring Valencia CF one step closer to relegation. So a win is a must, there is no other option and making defensive blunders tomorrow will be extremely costly. I put most of the blame on Diakhaby and Javi Gracia, Diakhaby has been the most error prone player with the most big mistakes, but Javi Gracia is the coach, he should have done something, change tactics, change formation or just change Diakhaby and play Hugo or Ferro instead.
| 32 | Games | 32 |
| 40 | Goals | 27 |
| 47 | Goals lost | 48 |
| 25% (8) | Wins | 22% (7) |
| 25% (11) | Draws | 22% (9) |
| 41% (13) | Defeats | 50% (16) |
| 1.25 | Goals per game | 0.84 |
| 1.47 | Goals lost per game | 1.50 |
| 5 (16%) | Clean sheets | 8 (25%) |
| 9.65 | Corners per game | 8.68 |
| 4.48 | Corners for per game | 3.32 |
| 5.16 | Corners against per game | 5.35 |
| 21 (66%) | BBTS | 17(53%) |
| 47.87% | Ball possession | 42.10% |
| 10.65 | Shots per avg | 8.45 |
| 3.68 | Shots on goal avg | 2.42 |
| 2.42 | Offsides avg | 1.97 |
| 257.58 | Passes avg | 237.52 |
| 75.80% | Completed passes | 70.17% |
Valencia CF Probable Squad: Cillessen; Piccini, Diakhaby, Paulista, Gaya; Wass, Soler, Racic, Cheryshev; Guedes, Cutrone
Winning probability: Valencia CF 30% win, Draw 50%, Alaves 20% win
Result prediction: Valencia CF 1-0(1-1) Deportivo Alaves
Valencia CF should win this, as long as no one makes a defensive blunder we should be able to score at least one goal and win, but Alaves is in better form than us recently and are no doubt going to give us a challenge. I'm expecting either a small 1-0 win here or a draw if we have a defensive blunder to give away a goal.