La Liga Preview: Villarreal Looking to Close the Gap on Valencia

Villarreal vs. Gijon

Villarreal enjoyed a morale-boosting win over Bayern Leverkusen in the Europa League match midweek, and they will be looking to use the victory as stepping stones towards getting their form back in La Liga.

The dip in form has meant that Villarreal are now down to the fourth position, with four points separating them from third-placed Valencia.

They will be up against a Sporting Gijon side that has won against Getafe and drawn against Barcelona in their last few matches.

Even though they might be close to the relegation zone, they will be providing formidable opposition to Villarreal winning.

The last 10 matches have been extremely good for Sporting Gijon, as they have taken 16 points.

However, given that this is an away match, Gijon will be focusing more on stopping their opponents rather than scoring themselves, which could result in a cagey affair.

As a result of their recent form, the relegation threat has eased a little.

Nilmar scored the injury time winner over Bayern Leverkusen and he is expected to provide significant attacking threat for Villarreal.

Villarreal will hope to use the home match against Sporting Gijon to produce better results.

Sevilla vs. Barcelona

Barcelona progressed into the next round of the Champions League in spectacular fashion by beating Arsenal convincingly.

However, they will be looking to maintain the gap over Real Madrid most importantly this weekend.

The match against Sevilla is probably the toughest of all, given that Sevilla have been excellent at home at least in La Liga.

Barcelona have only 11 games to go to win the title, but the feeling is that, if they maintain the gap as it is, they will be doing so before the final round of fixtures.

However, the going gets tough for Barcelona from this fixture onwards, and Sevilla will be looking to make the most out of it.

Even though Barcelona have been suffering from a number of injuries of late, it has not affected their form at all.

Given that they will be boosted by the return of a number of players from the injury table, it is expected to boost their performance even more.

However, they will still be without Carles Puyol, who is not ready to take part in the league matches yet. Andres Palop is the major doubt for Sevilla.

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