Valencia VS FC Barcelona

Valencia host Barcelona for this Spanish LaLiga round 12 clash at Estadio de Mestalla  early Sunday morning Beijing time. This is the second-best league in the world and I expect a fine match to watch for football fans here! However, I believe Valencia will be choose to play quite defensive football against a very strong opponent.. This lowers the goal expectancy and increases the probability of a draw - as well as the chance for my fans and I to win yet another bet betting on this great league! The biggest and sharpest bookies with the highest betting limits have estimate the number of expected goals at 3.02 but this is too high in my opinion. I would say the goal expectancy is 2.65. Valencia do, after all, have a pretty good defense – certainly better than the betting market or many football journalists believe. They have allowed 13 goals so far but in terms of expected goal allowed(xGA) the number should be 11. In terms of expected points(xPTS) Valencia would have deserved 22 points but currently have 15 points to their account and are in the 9th place in the standings.

Barcelona, on the other hand, currently occupy the 2nd place in the standings after Real Madrid, the reigning LaLiga and Champions League Champions and do have, as I have mentioned in my previous previews, a good chance to fight for the LaLiga trophy this season. They have, however, taken two more points than they would have deserved in terms of expected points and allowed four goals less than they should have in terms of xGA. They have been very vulnerable in many Champions League matches this season.. I do expect Valencia to succeed in scoring here – perhaps even more than once. On Wednesday Barcelona were horribly bad against Bayern Munich losing 0-3 at home and looked very vulnerable in defense. Bayern Munich had already secured a spot in the Play Offs and Barcelona were favorites in this match – priced around 2.25 to won on the betting market.. Even so, they failed to record a single shot on the German visitors' goal! Bayern recorded seven. A shameful performance from Barcelona who have indeed been quite erratic this season. Barca have less than 72h to prepare for this match – a sub-optimal time in professional football. I expect Valencia to be the clearly fresher team here. They last played a week ago against Mallorca.

They lost to Mallorca match at home 1-2 but would have deserved a draw as the expected goals numbers were 1.21-1.22. Barcelona's manager, Barca legend and world champion Xavi, certainly has a lot of work to do if Barcelona want to return to the top of European football but he is not a top manager in my view.. Against Inter Milan Barca allowed three goals some 2.5 weeks ago at home and it was a disappointing 3-3 draw as clear favorites, priced around 1.50 to win by the bookies. The also lost in 0-1 in Milan and are now out of the Champions League Play Offs! What a disappointment! They have taken two fine wins in their latest two LaLiga matches though – over Villarreal and Athletic Bilbao but the opponent played below their normal level in both games. Barcelona are, of course, clearly better by pure class than Valencia have a 56% chance to win this clash. However, all my fans and I need to win the the handicap bet on the hosts is Valencia not to lose by more than one goal's difference – the chance for this is 71%