Holders Sevilla will beat Villarreal in Copa
Sacking Antonio Alvarez and bringing in one of the last season's most successful coaches, Gregorio Manzano, has proved to be anything but a miracle cure for Sevilla's La Liga problems. A home defeat to overachieving Espanyol at the weekend leaves them 11 points off the Champions League pace.
Their only realistic chance of achieving something domestically therefore is to retain the Copa del Rey and they've put themselves in a strong position to reach the semi-finals, where they would likely face Real Madrid, with a 3-3 first leg draw away to Spanish football's current best of the rest, Villarreal.
In fact, if there's one consolation for the disappointing results endured by the top-six regulars, it's that they have been involved in several thrilling games in recent months, while they've scored a ridiculous number of goals in the Copa.
Manzano's men have hit the net at least three times in each of their five matches in the competition, in which they've fired a ridiculous 21 times in total. Unsurprisingly, over 3.5 goals is subsequently shorter than you would normally expect to find it at [2.68].
They can't take their away goals at El Madrigal as a guarantee of progress though as they were chasing throughout the first encounter, trailing 3-1 at one stage only for strikes from Alvaro Negredo and Alexis to not only keep them in the tie but effectively hand them the advantage.
If you expect the Yellow Submarine to progress then take the [3.5] on them winning on the night instead of the [2.84] on them qualifying because they effectively need to triumph to go through unless there's another high-scoring draw due to the away goals rule.
Our money will be on Sevilla doing enough in 90 minutes to keep their defence alive however at [2.2] as they've seen off Villarreal at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan on each of their last three visits. The last finished 3-2 in their favour and a repeat tonight can be backed at [26.0].
Sevilla v Villarreal
Kick-off: 9pm
Live on Sky Sports 3
Will Negredo be the hero again? He's [6.0] to score the first goal...
Published: 18 Jan 2011
Leave a comment