Villarreal vs Barcelona Prediction - Will An Inconsistent Barcelona Be Able To Win At El Madrigal?

Next Sunday, Barcelona will travel to Comunidad Valenciana to take on Villarreal at El Madrigal for round 35 of Liga BBVA on a match of major importance for the Blaugranas if they don’t want to lose the title train.

Barcelona might consider themselves lucky after their last Sunday’s match against Athletic Bilbao at Camp Nou. The Basque team put up a quality performance and if it wasn’t from those fatidic five minutes, during which they allowed Barcelona to score twice, they would have won the match. At the end and during the match, Catalan supporters expressed their discontent with the team and waved some white tissues from the stands.

After the Copa del Rey disappointment last week against Real Madrid, Gerardo Martino managed to inject some motivation unto his players for the match against Bilbao, but it will probably be difficult for him to put their minds together for the remaining matches of the season, especially after the elimination from the UEFA Champions League and the Spanish Cup setback.

For next Sunday’s travel to the always difficult El Madrigal, Tata Martino will still not be able to count on Victor Valdés and Pique, who are sidelined due to long term injuries, and he is still not yet certain if Neymar and Jordi Alba will be 100% fit for the match against Villarreal.

As for Villarreal, this season has been very positive for them if one considers that they only returned to the Spanish football top flight in 2013/2014. Notwithstanding, the Yellow Submarine’s current moment is far from being impressive, since the team has only won two of their last six matches and displayed some very mediocre performances. Last Monday, Villarreal was defeated at Málaga, thus extending their poor away form this season.

For next Sunday’s match against Barcelona, Marcelino Toral is not yet certain if he will be able to count on the Nigerian forward Uche and on the Spanish defenders José Dorado and Pablo Iniguez, all sidelined due to injury.

When both sides met at Camp Nou back in December, Barcelona grabbed a narrow 2-1 win thanks to two goals from Neymar, but Villarreal were surely left with the feeling that they could and should have done more and, had they been just a bit more ambitious, they could have left with a different outcome. Next Sunday, Barcelona will need to create something very special, substantially different from what they did against Bilbao, if they want to collect the three points at the end of the match.

Villarreal

Stats: W-15 L-12 D-7
Recent Form - LWDLWL

Barcelona

Stats: W-26 L-5 D-3
Recent Form - WWWLW

Possible Line-ups

Villarreal (4-4-2) – Asenjo - Mario - Musacchio - Pantic - Costa - Pina - Bruno - Aquino - Cani - Perbet - J. Pereira

Barcelona (4-3-3) - Pinto - Montoya - Bartra - Mascherano - Adriano - Busquets - Xavi - Iniesta - Pedro - Sánchez - Messi.

Prediction: Villarreal 1 Barcelona 1