La Liga: Why on Earth doesn't anyone want to win it?

European Leagues / Dan Fitch / 21 March 2008 / Leave a Comment

Dan "the betting man" Fitch is trying to work out why La Liga is the hot potato of European football. In the meantime, he reveals the truth behind those Guti rumours.

There are some prizes that people don't want to win. A Golden Raspberry film award, for example, or the X-Factor (if you consider yourself a serious musician). But I'm puzzled as to why nobody seems to want to win La Liga. No matter how hard Real Madrid try to stuff it up, Barcelona somehow manage to keep pace with their own brand of self-sabotage. As for the rest of the league, well just forget it. They all managed to bail out of the title race around Christmas.

Valencia wanted out of it so badly, that when just four points off the top of the table, they sacked their manager Quique Sanchez Flores and replaced him with the inferior Ronald Koeman. The ruddy-faced blonde duly delivered and Valencia are now an impressively distant twenty six points off the pace. With David Villa in your starting line up, that's quite a feat.

On Sunday evening Real Madrid host Valencia and will want to get back to winning ways. They can hardly play any worse than they did last weekend against Deportivo, when they failed to record a single shot at goal. Last week I tipped the 1-0 win for Depor at odds of [13.0] and I hope that some of you got on at this price, because I didn't. Due to the excitement of visiting my girlfriend's parents in Dorset, it completely slipped my mind to place the bet, though the trip to the excellent sealife centre in Weymouth almost made up for this loss.

Madrid have now lost six times this season, yet still lead the league by seven points. Their recent form has been woeful, losing eight of the sixteen games played in 2008, which has seen them crash out of both the Champions League and the Copa del Rey. Only Joe Lewis has had a costlier start to the year.

Just when Real need to turn around this run of form, comes the news that Ruud Van Nistelrooy is out for the rest of the season. His absence has been a major factor in Madrid's poor second half of the season and they badly need a figure up front, who is comfortable leading the line. But there is a paucity of such players at the Bernabeu.

Roberto Soldado partnered Raul against Deportivo and although he doesn't look up to the job, Schuster has few other options available to him. Madrid's attacking options were also given a blow, when Guti was injured this week in training. Guti is touch and go for the Valencia game and the playmaker has had a tough time of it of late. He was recently 'outed' in the Spanish press, when he was snapped kissing a man full on the lips. But it eventually transpired that like Madrid, the 'man' was lacking something up front; as it was actually Guti's sister.

Valencia fans have had more to put up with this season, than cases of mere mistaken sexuality. They went into this season with justified hopes of challenging the top two for the title, but between the sacking of Sanchez Flores and the falling out and resulting legal row, with David Albelda, Valencia have performed miserably. The danger now is that come May, most of Valencia's star performers will also be looking to jump ship, including David Villa.

At least there is one ray of hope for Valencia, as last night they reached the final of the Spanish cup, beating Barcelona 3-2 on the night to seal a 4-3 aggregate win. This success has probably saved Koeman's job for now and a win in the final against Getafe could see him being allowed to carry on in the role next season.

Playing on Thursday night will take its toll, so the [1.6] available for the Real Madrid home win is good value, with Valencia [7.6] and the draw [4.1]. Madrid have only lost once at home in La Liga and I think they'll take the three points here.