Valencia CF will 'welcome' Villarreal CF at the Mestalla today at 18:30 in what is a key match for Valencia CF as the team has not recorded a single win in the past 7 matches, and what is even more worrying is that the gameplay just isn't there. While at the beginning of the season and even against Real Madrid the team looked solid and capable of winning, this has not been the case in the past 6 matches, in most of them Valencia CF having to fight back from a deficit and barely scramble a draw and in many cases it hasn't been able to even manage a draw!
I think the issues are clear to Jose Bordalas, he knows what they are, but the difficult part will be fixing them! I wrote an article saying that its time to go back to basics, basically start from the ground up and just work on rudimentary stuff, along with just playing a lot of short matches to gel the team. My biggest issue is that the team never seems like a one whole, we are never really playing like a team, its always just a few players kind of randomly passing the ball around and essentially having individual talent win or rescue games for us.
I've not seen a consistent and persistent systematic attack or systematic passing of the ball, both back and forth and trying to find holes in the defense, we string a few passes together and most of the time either lose the ball or have no end product. We need to retain the ball if there is no good option and pass it around, forward and back, then side to side and we need to have all of our players opening up to receive the ball, including the forwards, including the back.
Jose Bordalas is on the right track in identifying the problems, he recently stated that players just wait for the ball to come to their feet and that is just not realistic, he is absolutely right, they need to be running for every ball, running to intercept passes and not just standing in one position and waiting for the pass to perfectly come to their legs!
Good news for Valencia CF is that Villarreal CF aren't any better and thus this will be an interesting match and a step forward for one team and even further step back for the other. Looking at the statistics Valencia CF has scored 3 more goals than Villarreal CF, but its also conceded way more goals 17 to the 10 of Villareal. Valencia CF also has a worse possession as well as a miserable 74% pass rate, compared to the 60% possession rate and 86% percent pass rate for Villarreal.
So statistically it is not looking good for us, but what we have is those individual moments, what we have is individual talent, so a Guedes or a Soler or a Gaya can make the difference for us in tight situations. We've also missed Correia on that right back spot, he has been training for the past few days normally, but its unclear if he'll be fully fit and in full form to start this match. Gabriel Paulista is also a doubt for this match, though he has also completed a soft training session the previous day, so he could be back in the squad.
Valencia CF Squad: Cillessen, Correia, Paulista, Alderete, Gaya; Soler, Hugo, Wass, Cheryshev; Andre, Guedes
Winning Probability: Valencia CF 25% Draw 40% Villareal CF 35%
Result Prediction: I think Villareal CF are the favorites to win this match as painful as it is to say that, but they the better team overall and just haven't had too much luck on their side, while Valencia CF has been the worse team overall with more conceded goals, less ball possession, poor passing and less goal chances. I think getting a draw would be decent for this match, I hope for a win, but I'm expecting a loss here. Valencia CF 1-2 Villareal CF!