Next Friday, 28th of November 2014, a clearly underachieving Real Sociedad will measure forces with Elche, who are also in need for points, at Anoeta for round 13 of the Spanish Liga BBVA, on a match that will mark David Moyes’ debut at Anoeta in front of his new team’s demanding supporters, who have had enough of managerial bad decisions so far this season.

The Basque Team is having a season to forget and they are certainly hoping that the arrival of David Moyes, who appears to be delighted with this new challenge, will help them recover the time they have lost and bring them to a respectable position on the league table.

After an excellent home win over La Liga’s champions Atlético Madrid three weeks ago, just a few days after Ansoategui’s dismissal, Real Sociedad failed to get anything better than a draw from their visit to Riazor, a traditionally complicated environment for the visitors (except for Real Madrid, who scored eight goals there this season), on David Moyes’ first match at the helm of the Txuriurdin. It was a drab match, but the visitors had several opportunities to score and made, in fact, a very decent display. David Moyes implemented some changes in the team, as he presented something quite similar to a 4-4-1-1, with Carlos Vela providing support to Agirretxe up in the front. The Scottish manager has a Herculean task ahead of him and he will certainly need to dig deep in order recover the confidence levels that the team achieved last season, for example. Real Sociedad have a quality set of players but, for some reason, they have been clearly underachieving this season. Pundits claim that Real’s Champions League’s stint last season has torn the team into pieces but, on the other hand, they were probably just needing an inflow of fresh ideas and nothing better than a new manager, who wants to make a stand after his United’s nightmarish stint, to implement the changes they need to achieve success.

As for Elche, they are also far from being having a positive season so far and they are currently third from bottom with just ten points from twelve matches. Nevertheless, Fran Escriba’s boys are currently on a very decent run of three matches without a single defeat and they are travelling to Anoeta with the hopes of extending their recent good moment. Over the weekend, they made an excellent comeback against Cordoba after being down two goals to nil and with just 30 minutes to play. A goal by Lomban and another one by Jonathas offered the Franjiverdes a well deserved draw and granted them a precious point, especially in turbulent times such as these.

Despite Elche’s positive moment, Real Sociedad are firm favourites to win the match. The Basque team appears to be stronger when playing at home and even though they have experienced some upsets this season, they have managed to overcome both Atlético and Real Madrid at Anoeta’s stronghold.

Real Sociedad

Stats: W-1 L-3 D-1

Recent Form - LLDWL

Elche

Stats: W-3 L-0 D-2

Recent Form - WDWDW

Possible Line-ups

Real Sociedad (4-4-1-1) - Zubikarai - C. Martínez - Gorka - Ansotegui - La Bella - Granero - Canales - Bergara - Castro - Carlos Vela - Agirretxe

Elche (4-4-2) - Tyton - Suarez - Rocco - Lomban - Cisma - Mosquera - Pasalic  - Fajr - Garry Rodrigues - Cristian Herrera - Jonathas

Prediction

Real Sociedad 2 Elche 0