Preview: Villarreal – Barça; Sunday 1pmEST, GolTV [Updated]

By: Isaiah | December 19th, 2008

After what felt like a month off, we’re back to the league, though not without first being handed Lyon. But now it’s Villarreal time, time to either let the raggamuffins that we call our domestic league cohorts back into the fray or body slam them further down the relative table.

I’m feeling it today because I’ve got my blood up thanks to La Liga Loca. Let’s be clear: I love La Liga Loca. It’s one of the better English-language blogs about our beloved Spanish league, but they crossed the line this week into mumbo-jumbo randomness and I have to call them out for it. Now, LLL has never been one for actually dissecting the teams and their strategies/statistics during the Great Weekend Prediction series, but usually there’s some sense that they’re going along with the way the teams are playing. This week, however, the Villarreal – Barcelona match receives a few comments about Messi moaning about being tackled hard and then bequeaths the rather surprising “Home win” to Villarreal. I have no problem with anyone believing that Villarreal will beat the blaugrana — let’s be clear about that — but to offhandedly suggest that they will beat us without offering up in the smallest morsel of why smacks of a randomness I hadn’t previously encountered in LLL. Because Cazorla and Senna claim that being kicked isn’t a problem they’re going to win? I know I’m reading too much into a site that is mostly for entertainment (and it is entertaining), but come on, let’s have some sort of explanation of how a team that is 4th is going to beat a team that’s in 1st. Even if it’s something as simple as “Barcelona doesn’t stack up physically” or “Messi spends half his time on the ground and the other half whining at the ref instead of playing” is good enough for me. My complaint is for anyone who approaches predicting matches in a random fashion — it’s not that they’re going to be wrong more often than someone who has a specific system (they might even be right more often), its that they’re random, rather than logical.

What gets me is that there’s no reason to think that last year’s 3-1 defeat at the Madrigal will be repeated. First, there’s a different squad with a different style and secondly there’s the little matter of form. How does one predict that a team that has gone 4W-4D-2L (19GF, 17GA) in its last 10 matches is going to beat a team that has gone, over the exact same time period, 9W-1D-0L (28GF, 3GA)? Is it the +2 goal differential compared to the +25GD? Or is the the fact that over that time period, Barcelona has played everyone except Villarreal in the European spots as well as a team that beat Villarreal 0-3 in the Madrigal (Valladolid, who Barcelona beat 6-0 in the Camp Nou).

Compare home and away stats:
Villarreal home: 4W-2D-1L (14GD, 12GA), 2pts per game
Barcelona away: 6W-0D-1L (18GF, 4GA), 2.57pts per game

If you’re going to shade Villarreal’s way based on nothing more than that, feel free to give them a draw as they’re fairly steady throughout (they’re slightly worse on the road at 1.86pts per game, but allow fewer goals there — 7 in 8 matches — oddly enough), but a home win seems as likely as it did for Sevilla. In fact, it seems less likely than it did for Sevilla, who, as we know, lost 0-3. Sevilla, by the way, are now, after their defeat to us, 9W-3D-3L (2pts per game; if you want to know, if you remove the game against us, they earn 2.14pts per game).

A lot of people have been comparing Senna and Yaya in an effort to determine the world’s foremost defensive midfielder. Beyond that, they’re comparing who would win on the field, but there is folly in both thoughts. They play different positions, really, that happen to be in the same part of the field. Senna is more of a passer and less of a stopper. He does the little things, while Yaya is more of a stopper and less of a passer and does the “bigger” stuff like tackling and roaring like a lion. That and they’ll probably never encounter each other unless Yaya makes a “rumbling-bumbling-stumbling” run through the middle.

Okay, so, no squads yet — just news that Xavi has renewed through 2014 (Surprised? Then you haven’t read anything Kevin has written. Ever.) — but we’re going full tilt here, so its time to do a random lineup:

Valdes, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Abidal, Toure, Xavi, Iniesta, Henry, Eto’o, Messi.

Welcome back, SPF45, your tan is wonderful!

Now for the predictions:
Official Isaiah Prediction: 2-2. I know that that probably comes as a surprise, but if you take the fact that Villarreal are fairly good at home, if not great, and you include the emotional letdown after the Clasico and you consider that Iniesta may not be fully fit, causing some disjointed moments, and you could easily see a couple of goals. We’re probably due for something negative to happen, though you know I’ll screaming my head off for the opposite. I do think Villarreal matches up well physically with us, but I think I’m probably being conservative despite my statistical analysis above.
My Lady’s Prediction: 3-1 Barcelona. I asked her what her reasoning was and she said, “Random.” I thought for a moment and then mentioned that I had just ranted for a while about random predictions and she said, “Okay, then put down that it’s cause it’s the team my boyfriend likes and they’re therefore awesome.” And she said it while making us dinner. Ladies and Gents: she’s a keeper.

PS I do the dishes.

Update: The squad list has been released and I’m already wrong about the lineup. No Iniesta in the following: Valdés, Henry, Xavi, Piqué, Puyol, Cáceres, Sylvinho, Bojan, Eto’o, Messi, Hleb, Dani Alves, Abidal, Keita, Gudjohnsen, Touré, Pinto, Sergio Busquets, Víctor Sánchez.

With that in mind and despite the fact that Iniesta is so totally ninja-like in his seeming invisibility yet total mastery of the game that he could very well be in that squad list, I’m changing my lineup above to this: Valdes, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Abidal, Toure, Xavi, Busquets, Henry, Eto’o, Messi.