Sunday’s hosts, Deportivo Alaves, stumbled to another defeat in the Spanish top flight during the week when they were handed a 3-1 loss on the road at Villarreal which became their third defeat in four matches.
Although Deportivo Alaves created various chances in front of goal, they could only muster the single goal and were eventually overrun by Villarreal, making it a miserable start to this La Liga campaign for the hosts.
Earlier defeats to Real Betis 1-0 at home and a 2-1 loss on the road at Granada also don’t bode well for Alaves, and although they stemmed the flow of defeats with a 0-0 draw at home with Getafe last weekend, this seems to have been only a temporary measure.
The bigger picture shows that Deportivo Alaves have now managed to pick up just one win from their last 13 matches overall in the Spanish top flight and it looks like the hosts will be gearing up for a potential relegation battle this term unless results drastically improve.
To make matters worse, Deportivo Alaves are without a win on home turf at their Estadio de Mendizorroza from their last six matches which also includes failing to hit the back of the net in each of these six games too.
Sunday’s visitors, Athletic Bilbao, have only managed to fare marginally better than their hosts as they’ve lost two of their first three matches of this new La Liga campaign, losing to Granada 2-0 away from home and losing 1-0 at home to newcomers, Cadiz, last weekend.
In between, Athletic Bilbao picked up an important three points on the road with a 2-1 win at Eibar, and they face a potentially tricky away-day at Alaves this Sunday, but having lost just three of their last eight matches on their travels in La Liga, Bilbao will be reasonably confident that they can further compound Alaves’s woes here.
The three defeats that were inflicted upon Bilbao during this sequence were by Barcelona and Granada (twice) but the visitors have also recorded wins at Villarreal, Valencia, Levante and Eibar during this period too.
Athletic Bilbao have also scored in five of these last eight outings on the road and this could be the key to deciding the outcome of this clash at Deportivo Alaves on Sunday.