La Liga Preview: Hola! to the most exciting league in the world

Spanish Football / Tobias Gourlay / 27 August 2009 / Leave a Comment

"Recommended Bets: Back Over 2.5 Goals at [1.92] in Valencia v Sevilla; back Barcelona -2.0&-2.5 at [2.0] v Sporting Gijon; back Mallorca at [2.0] to beat Xerez"

Tobias Gourlay emerges from a dark couple of months without the Spanish Primera División to find it in rude health.

Domestic football seasons across Europe have been under way for a couple of weeks now. Hopefully they have provided succour in the difficult period when the Continent's very best league - the one that already had loads of goals, and now has Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as well as the two favourites for the Champions League - has been on its summer siesta.

Cancel your Setanta subscriptions because you don't need French or German football any more. La Liga starts up this weekend after a close season that was especially kind to Valencia. At the end of the last campaign, Los Che faced bankruptcy and it seemed highly unlikely that they would be able to hang on to both David Villa and David Silva. A cash injection has saved them - but not before they had sold Raul Albiol to Real - and they have even spent a bit of money on a new goalkeeper, Miguel Angel Moya from Mallorca. The squad has been trimmed, but its core remains the same and a couple of notes of optimism have even been heard echoing around the Mestalla.

That wonderful stadium saw a lot of goals last season - 15/19 league games went Over 2.5 Goals and 11 of them finished with Over 3.5 Goals. In the absence of short-term form and in the continued presence of Villa and Silva, it is reasonable to imagine similar patterns for the season ahead. Four of their five games with other top-six sides produced at least four goals; the other one managed three.

Sunday's visitors are Sevilla, who finished third last season and have added Didier Zokora and Alvaro Negredo, a rollicking striker nicknamed the 'Wild Animal of Vallecas', to their squad. Despite the podium finish, coach Manolo Jimenez was targeted by the media - he wasn't very nice to the gentlemen of the press when he was a player, apparently - who said his team's style of play was much too boring for fans who had got used to Juande Ramos's more attacking system. Perhaps the signing of Negredo, who scored 19 times in the league for Almeria in the most recent campaign and will compete with Luis Fabiano for a place upfront with Freddie Kanoute (if the Brazilian sticks around), is a sign of a new approach from Jimenez. Small stakes on Over 2.5 Goals ([1.92]) and Over 3.5 Goals ([3.3]) for Sunday's match look sensible.

Sporting Gijon survived by the skin of their teeth last season. Their fans - widely known as the most passionate in Spain - won't remember how close it was, and will expect Manuel Preciado's team to play with the cavalier spirit that saw them concede a league-high 79 goals, including 13 lost to Barcelona and Real Madrid in the space of four September days, and draw only one match all season. A goalkeeper, Juan Pablo, has arrived from Numancia, but whether he is any better than the four that were used last season remains to be seen. Los Rojiblancos have not spent anything else on players.

You already know about Barcelona and what they achieved in 2008/09. The only change to the first team for the new campaign is the replacement of Samuel Eto'o with Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The Swede has many doubters - this column is amongst them - but it is not in domestic games at home to lower-half teams that he has traditionally failed to show himself. The goals markets are very tightly priced: Over 3.5 Goals is a [1.95] shot at the time of writing.

It seems reasonable to expect goals when Barca welcome Sporting to the Camp Nou on Monday night, although, as with all of the games discussed this week, the lack of any real form guide could be a concern and stakes should be adjusted accordingly. This is why, for example, this column will wait for a few weeks before assessing the merits of teams - like Real Madrid - who are significantly changed from the end of last season. If you do expect goals in Catalonia, you probably expect most of them to come from the home team, in which case the Asian handicap markets might have more appeal. Barcelona -2.0&-2.5 are [2.00].

There is one final match to consider in this first week of the season: Mallorca versus Xerez. The islanders finished last season very strongly, and Aritz Aduriz, who scored classy goals in big games, might finally fulfil his potential at the age of 28. He might not, of course, but Xerez are newly promoted from the Segunda Division and, in the absence of ready cash, have had to make do with a plethora of loan signings as preparation for the step up. Mallorca to win are a tempting proposition at evens.