Espanyol welcome Celta Vigo to the RCDE Stadium on Monday night for the final match of this weekend’s fixtures in La Liga.
This is the fourth round of matches in the 2017/18 La Liga season and both clubs find themselves in the bottom half of the table. However, the pressure is on the home team who are yet to win a match in the league.
Espanyol come into this match in the relegation zone, having picked up 1 point from their three league games.
They started the season positively and won a good point at Sevilla in a 1-1 draw. Having travelled to a difficult place to play on the opening day and come away undefeated, there was a positive mood ahead of the home match with Leganes.
However, the mood soon changes as Espanyol went down 1-0 in a match they were expected to win. What followed was a tough trip to the Camp Nou to take on local rivals Barcelona and Espanyol were brushed aside 5-0.
Looking back over Espanyol’s recent home fixtures and things do not improve. Including matches from last season, trends show Espanyol have lost their last four home La Liga games. Not only that, they have failed to score a single goal in any of them, which is a very poor record.
Espanyol need to start winning matches at home soon or they are going to be in for a very tough season.
Celta Vigo travel to the RCDE Stadium on the back of their first win of the season, which was a 1-0 home victory against Deportivo Alaves.
Celta Vigo’s other two matches this season have ended in defeat and they started the campaign with a 3-2 home loss against Real Sociedad. Celta Vigo twice took the lead in that game but went on to concede two goals in the last 10 minutes to lose the match.
They also took the lead in their only other away fixture of the season, which was at Real Betis. Again, they failed to hold on to their advantage and conceded a second goal with 13 minutes left on the clock.
Trends show Celta Vigo have lost their last four La Liga away matches and have won just one of their last ten. In fact, they have been defeated in eight of those ten games and have been struggling to pick up points on the road, a problem which stretches back into last season.
Looking ahead to the team news and Espanyol will be without the injured duo of Oscar Duarte and Javi Lopez. Diego Lopez is fit again and could return in goal.
Celta Vigo have doubts over the fitness of John Guidetti and Nemanja Radoja. Otherwise, they have a fully fit squad to choose from and Iago Aspas will be their main threat going forward.
Neither team will be approaching this match with a great deal of confidence. However, Celta Vigo picked up their first win of the season last weekend and that will give them a boost, but this is a must win game for Espanyol. In what should be a tight match between two evenly matched teams, Espanyol Draw No Bet looks like a decent option.