Football Results

The two teams are in totally different shape and by that their positions in the table differ significantly. Espanyol doesn’t play well lately and occupies a place in lower half of table but still has nine points more than teams in the drop zone. Real is third in the La Liga table and is in very good shape; it has five-game winning streak from two competitions, La Liga and Champions League. Espanyol has on the other hand seven-game winless streak. The two teams have in common that were both eliminated in the quarter-finals of Copa del Rey. In the first part of season Real won Espanyol 2-0 at home.

Espanyol

Espanyol didn’t win for a very long time but they can console themselves with fact they didn’t lose in previous four rounds, when they drew all four matches. Overall, Espanyol already drew 10 matches this season, however, it has been waiting to win since the first round of the second part of season, when they won Malaga away. After that Espanyol won only Barcelona in the Cup but nevertheless it was eliminated from the competition. If we take a look only at the league, Espanyol didn’t win in previous seven rounds, while it drew even five times in the same period.

Trenutno su u nizu od četiri remija i dva su odigrali na svom terenu sa Barcelonom i Villarrealom, a dva puta su igrali nerješeno na gostovanjima u Galiciji, kod Celte i proteklog vikenda kod Deportiva. Junak tog remija je bio golman Diego Lopez, koji je odbranio i penal, a osvježenja u sastavu su bili O.Duarte i Piatti. Sada ne očekujemo nove promjene.

Probable lineups Espanyol: Di. Lopez – V. Sanchez, Da. Lopez, O. Duarte, Martin – Granero, C. Sanchez, Darder, Piatti – Baptistao, G. Moreno

Real Madrid

Real is right rhythm now and it wins one after another opponent. It should be stressed that Real is exemplary efficient recently; it won five matches in a row and scored at least three goals in each of them, while against Real Sociedad and Betis it scored by five goals. On Saturday it routinely won Alaves 4-0 at home, where Real’s striking trio BBC scored all three goals; C. Ronaldo scored two and Bale and Benzema by one. It is very good that Benzema finally scored as he was in crisis recently, up to the point where press started to criticise him.

Manager Zidane constantly rotates the players due to large number of matches. Last week Real played postponed match with Leganes and Ronaldo didn’t play, just like injured Marcel, Modric and Kroos. Those players haven’t appeard against Alaves too, as well as Ramos who had accumulated five yellow cards. Ramos is definitely back in the team now, while three abovementioned players are still out of action. Isco will probably be a starters as he didn’t play against Alaves.

Probable lineups Real Madrid: Navas – Carvajal, Varane, Ramos, T. Hernandez – Casemiro, Kovasic, Isco, Asensio – Ronaldo, Benzema

Verdict:

Espanyol doesn’t play well recently but it doesn’t lose matches easily either. On the other hand Real is right rhythm, it has series of victories and we expect to triumph again in this match.

Pick:  Asian handicap -0.75 Real Madrid 1.52 - 52/100 @1XBet