Saturday November 28th
Barcelona vs. Real Sociedad 15:00
Poor old Moyesy has been sent packing again, and he won’t have been thrilled to see his newest former team Real Sociedad put in a dominant performance where they had 64% possession in a 2-0 destruction of Sevilla last weekend. After what must have been a horrible time in the spotlight and Manchester United, it seemed like a great move for the Scot to head off to the relative anonymity of the Basque Country to take some stock, and get stuck into a job that was a little more like his time at Everton.
While Sociedad were buoyed by his arrival and had a decent 12th place finish last year, things hadn’t gone so well this time around and they found themselves among the early relegation strugglers.
Saturday is a whole new challenge for new manager Eusebio Sacristán as he takes his team the Camp Nou to face a Barcelona team that are fresh from thrashing Real Madrid in their own back yard and making a laughing stock of Roma in the Champions League in the preceding 7 days. Sociedad are a massive 35/1 to come away with a win, and even at that it would probably be a waste of money.
It took me a while to find any decent bet on this game, but I came up with one in the end. Barcelona to win and more than 4.5 goals in the match at 5/4 with Stan James. This is free money…They could score a dozen in this game.
Sunday November 29th
Eibar vs. Real Madrid 15:00
From one conservative manager who bit off more than he could chew to another. Rafael Benitez got the dreaded vote of confidence during the week from Réal president Florentino Perez and, while they were never in danger against Shaktar Donetsk they managed to concede 3 goals in the last 15 minutes to sour the scoreline. Playing away at Eibar is not a fixture that Rafa will be relishing.
The wonderfully over achieving Eibar will welcome Réal to their 5,000 seater stadium sitting in a well deserved 6th place, that could have been better again if they were able to hang on against Villareal last week.
Eibar are really well organised, not afraid to have a go and while you’d expect the ridiculous fire power of los Galaticos to win out in the end, momentum and many other factors will be helping the minnows. The bookies are certainly wary with Réal only priced up at 4/9 to win. I’m going to go with 4/1 for the draw. Speculative maybe, but value nonetheless.
