Villarreal's confidence will have grown with their performance against Juventus during the week, and the home side are the strong favourites to pick up three points here. Espanyol have held Barcelona and Sevilla in their last two home games, but we are expecting them to lose this match 2-1.
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Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Villarreal win with a probability of 57.7%. A draw had a probability of 22.7% and a win for Espanyol had a probability of 19.56%.
The most likely scoreline for a Villarreal win was 1-0 with a probability of 11.22%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-0 (10.25%) and 2-1 (9.87%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (10.8%), while for a Espanyol win it was 0-1 (5.91%). The actual scoreline of 5-1 was predicted with a 1% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole and our data analysis both correctly predicted that Villarreal would win this match.
