Victim
Oh dear, I have had a horrendous week. Once again Guardiola has made a fool of me. I blame the end of season whirlwind which throws everything out of kilter. Spiegelhalter did OK. He got three correct results but no correct scores.
Predicted scores in bold (where different)
Atlético Madrid 2 - 1(0) Hércules CF
Sporting Gijón 2 (1) - 1 (0) Racing Santander
Athletic Bilbao 1(2) - 1 Málaga CF
FC Barcelona 0 (2) - 0 Deportivo La Coruña
Valencia CF 0 (2) - 0 Levante UD
Real Zaragoza 1 - 0 (1) RCD Espanyol
Sevilla FC 3 (2) - 1 Real Sociedad
Getafe CF 2 (1) - 0 (1) Osasuna
Villarreal CF 1 - 3 (1) Real Madrid
UD Almería 3 (1) - 1 RCD Mallorca
It's good to see that lots of the guys I thought would do well did. That's always reassuring:
The predictor shows heavily favoured wins for Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Bilbao, Valencia and Sevilla. The only one I'm dubious about is Bilbao who are up against in form Malaga. I know the Basque side have one of the best home records in the league but Malaga have the best form playing anywhere in the league at the moment.
Either way, it would be prudent to pick up Bilbao's bargain GK Iraizoz at 6. The only other temptation for me might be Muniain. Malaga, I don't fancy any Malaga guys. The form men, Duda and Baptista too expensive.
Barcelona will be in a party mood and it could be a question of how many at home to Depor. I'm tempted to go with Messi even though he has really slowed down in scoring. I have a feeling his teammates will be helping him score as many as poss to catch Ronaldo. Elsewhere I'm hanging on to Keita and Affellay who are still great bargains.
Valencia and A.Mad should both cruise to home wins. Valencia will want to secure that 3rd place. Soldado, Jonas and Banega tempt. For Atleti I fancy Aguero. This could well be his last home game and Hercules will be despondent following their confirmed relegation. I quite like the idea of Koke as well. Possibly Diego Costa on the cheap.
Sevilla, while heavy favourites could be upset by a Sociedad side in a bit of form and in need of points. With Negredo's price ballooning following his scoring run, there's no great value to be had with the southern side. Maybe Capel, possibly Romaric at a stretch.
Outside of the heavy favourites, i'll be staying away from Villarreal v Real Madrid as both teams have little to play for. I like the look of Almeria at home to Mallorca following their excellent 0-0 with Villarreal. GK Esteban and striker Piatti are worth a punt. Getafe need a result more than Osasuna and I expect a win with Parejo heavily involved.
This week's predictions see Barcelona and Real Madrid heavy favourites as ever. The only other sides give a 50%+ chance of a win are Villarreal at Almeria and Osasuna against Sevilla. However, it is the business end of the season and the relegation threatened sides are starting to fight like mad to survive the drop, adding more unquantifiable variables to the mix. Only Almeria's demise has been decided and any two sides from 8th placed Espanyol down could still be relegated.
Apart from wins for the top 2 the only result I feel confident about is a Malaga win. Malaga majestically defied last weekend's predictions and are one of the form teams in the league and should ease past Gijon. The rest could be chaos and there should be plenty of goals. Hercules have to win. They will need big performances from Valdez, Trezeguet et al.
In summary:
Barcelona will win the league tonight. Real will hammer Getafe out of pure fury. Malaga will beat Gijon to all but secure safety. Hercules will beat Mallorca to keep breathing. Villarreal and Valencia will win. Osasuna will beat Sevilla Sociedad v Zaragoza, A.MAd v Racing and Deportivo v Bilbao will all be massive scraps.
It will be difficult to predict the Real lineup but at least Guadiola has said that he will not play a reserve side until they have secured the liga title.
This is the best performing star XI from La Liga's games of week 35 (May 7th/8th) according to Yahoo Fantasy Football.
3-4-3 formation
Strikers
Ronaldo, Real Madrid, 49 Flat-track bully takes out his frustrations on Sevilla with 4 goals in 6-2 victory
Adrian, Deportivo 26 2 goals for U21 star almost gave Deportivo a much needed win. 2-2 draw at Gijon
Negredo, Sevilla 25 2 goals as Sevilla lost 6-2 at home to Real
Mids
Gio Dos Santos, Racing Santander, 25.5 pts Spurs loanee scores twice, moving racing 4 points clear of relegation zone and keeping Hercules in 19th. Hercules 2-3 Racing
Thiago Gomes, Hercules, 20.5 pts A goal and assist but all in vain
Camunas, Osasuna, 18 pts Always a surprise - goal and an assist in relegation 6 pointer 3-1 win at Zaragoza.
A. Iniesta, Barcelona, 17.5 pts Match winning goal, as Barca ease closer to the title with 2-0 win over Espanyol. "Espanyol had not won for 111 days; practically the entire second half of the season." (Forzafutbal)
Defs
Pique, Barcelona, 15 pt Goal against Espanyol
Mathieu, Valencia 14.5 1 assist and clean sheet in 3-0 win over Sociedad
Mane, Getafe, 13.5 1 assist and clean sheet for Getafe in 2-0 win over Almeria
GK
Diego Lopez, Villarreal, 17 pts Clean sheet in 0-0 draw at Mallorca
Special mentions M.Ozil, Real Madrid, 17.5 pts 3 assists enabling Real's 6-2 rout of Sevilla. Same points as Iniesta but not as good value
Julio Baptista, Malaga, 14.5 Another goal (8 in 9 games now!!!!!) as Malaga shock Atletico Madrid 3-0.
Pedro Rios, Getafe, 14.5 U21 midfield starlet with another vital goal in Getafe's 2-0 win to lift them out of the relegation zone.
My team?
Quite pleased but got scorched by Guardiola's decision not to rotate.
Pep Guardiola seems to like taking the rise with fantasy football managers. Barcelona, as you might expect, are the highest scoring team in Yahoo Fantasy football: over the season, the accumluated score of their squad makes 2928pts. Their closest rivals are natually Real Madrid with 2754.5 pts. One would imagine that shoehorning as many Barca players into your line-up would be a sensible tactic for any fantasy manager, but alas, the champions elect keep upsetting me. David Villa has 2 goals in 10 games, Xavi hardly ever breaks 10 pts, Messi's value is always 40+, and with the recent fixture congestion, its almost impossible to predict the damn lineup as Pep rotates his boys to ensure freshness.
With an 5 pt lead and a game in hand, (with 3 to play) before Sunday night's fixture against Espanyol, Barca had to all intents and purposes won La Liga. One might expect that going into last nights home derby, Pep might have given a rest to the stars that secured passage to the Champions League final on Tuesday. You'd be given further reason for believing this given that throughout April, the team was heavily rotated with the likes of Jeffren, Pinto, Milito, Keita, Thiago, Affellay, and Fontas featuring frequently in the Liga matches. Even more weight is thrown behind this theory when you consider that Espanyol are on a horrible run of form and never beat Barcelona. So surely, these fringe names would feature in the gimme home game on Sunday?
But no, apart from perhaps the inclusion of Fontas and the absence of Puyol, he goes and names 9 of his strongest line-up; that which we will surely see against Man Utd. You might say to me, Pep could not risk increasing the pressure on himself and his team with another blip after last week's shock loss to Sociedad. you might say, he needs to play his strongest 11 to keep them sharp for the CL final.
Having picked Pinto, Affellay and Jeffren for my side this weekend, I prefer to think he has it in for fantasy football managers. Maybe it has something to do with Jose Mourinho's professed enjoyment of the Fantasy Football game, maybe Pep doesn't have time for such frivolity, but for my money, he's clearly out to undermine my fantasy football selections. Only Affellay got any game time. He got me 1 point.
This weeks predictions according to Spiegelhalter see heavily favoured wins for Barcelona (89%), Atletico Madrid (72%), Valencia (69%), Atletico Bilbao (59%) and Real Madrid (58%).
Of course, Spiegelhalter does not take into account the factors that influence a catalunian derby but a heavy defeat for Espanyol looks on the cards either way. Barca will be expected to rest their big guns as per last week so it seems prudent to stick with Affellay and go for outsiders such as Thiago and Jeffren again. We should at least get goals.
Atletico Madrid are in hot, hot form and Spiegelhalter only backs up what we all know to expect from their tie with Malaga: goals. This game should yield lots of goals, whatever the result with Malaga also scoring freely in recent games. Sticking with the likes of Aguero and Reyes appears safe but it could be a worthy gamble to take a punt on Forlan or Diego Costa.
Valencia will surely get back to winning ways at home to Sociedad even if the Basques scored that shocker over Real last week. Jonas feels like a good pick.
Meanwhile, Bilbao look good for a home win over Levante. Muniain, Llorente and Toquero all feel like safe bets.
I don't like the look of Real away though, even though heavily favoured in the predictions, and will be staying away from this fixture.
This is the predictions in brief: get as many Barcelona, Bilbao, and A.Madrid guys as you can. I also like Miku and Rios from Getafe. Hope they help!
A belated look at the top performers from last week's La Liga in fantasy terms. Zaragoza's shock defeat of Real Madrid at the Bernabeau yielded the outstanding outfield performance of the round with midfielder Angel Lafita scoring a brace and the match winner to collect 24.5 pts. Seems like the lad has the habit against Los Blancos - the only vid I could find of Lafita is of the young spaniard having another excellent game against Real for Deportivo in 2009. At a value of just 8.8, Lafita is certainly an unlikely hero of the round.
The chance of Zaragoza scoring 3 goals was given at just 1% by Speigelhalter's model and an away win was given 3% compared to Real's 87%.
Racing Santander's Tono was the golden man of the round though. The goalkeeper had an astonishingly good game, racking up 8 saves, a penalty save and a clean sheet to earn a whopping 34 points as Kennedy Bakiricoglu's Racing secured a vital 2-0 win over Mallorca. All from a value of 6.5 too having scored minus points the previous two weeks.
The win moves Racing 3 pts clear of the relegation zone. A 1-0 win was predicted the most likely result by Speigelhalter's model so Tono was quite an easy pick and I rue missing out on his haul. I shyed away based on Mallorca's excellent recent form but Racing were given a 48% chance of victory compared to Mallorca's 28%. 1-0 and 1-1 were the most likely results in the Poisson distribution with 2-0 and 2-1 joint second.
The next highest scorers come from the front line. Peppe Rossi was on hand to get the match winning goal for Villarreal against Getafe and Osvaldo continued his excellent form doing likewise for Espanyol against Bilbao. Julio Baptista got a brace as Malaga scored an emphatic 3-1 win at home to Hercules - more on him in a moment.
Susaeta scored a rare goal for Bilbao in their loss to Espanyol. Cejudo and Camunas both put in excellent displays as Osasuna made sure Spiegelhalters predictions came true and beat Valencia 1-0. These guys are great for points but I never know when to pick them.
In defence, Sevilla's defenders Fazio and Julien Escude benefitted from a straight forward 1-0 away win at Almeria while Sergio Ramos scored a rare goal to be king of the defenders for this week. And there we have it; team of the week - and not a Messi or Ronaldo or any Barcelona player in sight (although, it is absolutely necessary to mention these key words for cynical SEO purposes).
Julio Baptista has obviously been reading this blog and put in a timely display as a former EPL player making good in La Liga. "La Bestia" who had an exceedingly poor season at Arsenal during his season loan from Real Madrid in 2006/07, has been in excellent form for the struggling Malaga since arriving from Roma in the last winter transfer window. The Andalucians were recently bottom of La Liga but former Real Madrid manager Manuel Pellegrini and his motley crew have done a fantastic job of stearing clear of the relegation zone in some style.
Baptista was brought to the south coast along with the new money and a wave of forgotten misfits of European football - (see Martin Demichelis and Enzo Maresca) and the former Sevilla forward had a good start at his new club. Injured after 5 games and not featuring since week 23, he has now scored four goals in three games since returning from injury against Mallorca in week 32. Overall he has a very tidy 7 in 8 games. So, hats off to "La Bestia" - it is great to see him recapture the sort of form which saw Real Madrid fork out 20million euros for the Brazilian's services 6 years ago.
Spiegelhater got 6 correct results and 3 exact scores. Actual results in brackets where different.
Real Madrid 2-0 Real Zaragoza (2-3)
Real Sociedad 0-2 FC Barcelona (2-1)
Deportivo La Coruña 1-1 Atlético Madrid (0-1)
Levante UD 1-0 Sporting Gijón (0-0)
Málaga CF 1-0 Hércules CF (3-1)
Racing Santander 1- 0 RCD Mallorca (2-0) UD Almería 0-1 Sevilla FC
Villarreal CF 2-0 Getafe CF (2-1) Osasuna 1-0 Valencia CF RCD Espanyol 2-1 Athletic Bilbao
