I can't see Villarreal's favorite for this game here and let's enjoy Espanyol's +0.25.

Espanyol lost last season's top scorer, Raul de Tomas, and hired Diego Martinez as a coach, after the good work he did at Granada. There were many changes for this season and the team took a long time to assimilate the ideas. They had a difficult schedule at the beginning of the season and with so many changes the beginning was difficult. But now the players have started to understand what the coach expects of them and things have started to improve. They are in a sequence of only 1 defeat in 7 games and in the last round they got a very good result playing away against the strong Atl. Madrid. Despite having one less player, they managed to make it 0-1 and only suffered a draw at the end of the game. It was a very good result and it shows how the team is growing from game to game.

Villarreal is having a season far below expectations. They even started the season well but Unai Emery left the club to go to Aston Villa and they were lost. In his place, they hired Quique Setien, who still hadn't done any work since he left Barcelona in 2020 and things didn't start well. There are 3 defeats and 1 draw since he took over and in the last game they were surprised at home by Mallorca and lost 0-2.

Espanyol plays at home and is growing while Villarreal is completely adrift and unable to beat anyone.