Pressure Off for Valencia as they Meet Celta Vigo

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Valencia welcome Celta Vigo the Mestalla Stadium on Thursday night with their thoughts turning towards the top half of the table.

It has been a poor season for Valencia and they have spent much of it struggling at the bottom of the La Liga table.  The club have picked up some league wins throughout 2017, having manged just five before the turn of the year.  However, the wins have been sporadic and just when Valencia appear to be hitting some good form, they lose a match.

Having picked up back-to-back wins against Espanyol and Villarreal in January and Athletic Club and Real Madrid in February, Valencia have failed to string two wins together in La Liga.  Marco Voro’s team have won just one of their last four games, which came on the weekend at home to Deportivo La Coruna.

The victory over Deportivo was convincing enough and the match was over as a contest by half-time, with a goal from Ezequiel Garay and an own goal by Raul Albentosa.  Joao Cancelo added the third goal in injury time to seal an important win for Valencia against a club who were just 3 points behind them before the start of play.

Celta Vigo travel to the Mestalla having picked up their third win in a row on the weekend, defeating Las Palmas 3-1 in Vigo.  This result added to the wins over Deportivo in La Liga and Krasnodar in the Europa League.

The wins over Deportivo and Las Palmas ended a run of four games without a win in La Liga for Eduardo Berizzo’s team.  The 5-0 loss at Barcelona was poor but it was the home defeat to Villarreal and draw with Espanyol which has been most disappointing out of Celta Vigo’s recent results.

One area where Celta Vigo have really struggled this season has been playing away from home.  The club have won only three away matches in La Liga and if they could have picked up a few more points on the road, they may have been in contention for a European place next season.  Celta Vigo have picked up 13 points from a possible 42 away from home, a return which has proved damaging this season.

Celta Vigo’s away record will be music to the ears of Valencia, who have enjoyed a good run of form at home in recent weeks.  It is now five league games without defeat at the Mestalla, with four wins and one draw.  The 2-1 victory over Real Madrid was a highlight and a repeat performance in this game would surely be enough to seal maximum points.

In terms of the team news, Valencia are without Martin Montoya, so Joao Cancelo is likely to start at right-back but Eliaquim Mangala returns from suspension and should slot into the back four.  There are no new injury problems for Celta Vigo and striker Giuseppe Rossi should continue up-front having scored the second hat-trick of his professional career on the weekend.

Recent matches between the teams have seen plenty of goals and Valencia will be looking to attack from the off in this game.  Only one of the previous nine meetings between the teams has seen one of either team fail to score.  With that in mind and the current home and away form of Valencia and Celta Vigo respectively, a home win with both teams scoring seems a likely result.