Unai Emery and Villarreal seek a crucial three points.
The shocking thing is that we have lost to Osasuna twice in the past. What's infuriating about this is that those points at the end of last season and also in the present would have us in 6th place instead of 7th. Such matches are important and we cannot afford to play another match against them without points.
Our adversaries
Osasuna is currently on 32 points and in 11th place and while I don't mean to be outrageous, they are not that good. If you'll remember, we left Chimi Avila a late winner, but this is a team that has only scored 25 goals throughout the season and two of them were against us. Kaik leads his team in goals with 5, and his next highest scorer is David Garcia, with 4 goals as a defender. He has not scored in his last two matches, both have lost.
Villarreal
After waiting almost a week and a half before playing again with Juventus, this match should have no reason to rotate. I hope to feature all of our healthy starters, and clearly the time has come to bring Boulaye Dia back to the lineup. Yeremy Pino is coming off a ridiculous 4 goal performance, and it's worth noting that he outperformed his XG by 1.8 goals in that match, so don't expect any repeats in this. We discuss whether or not he should start our podcast which you can find here.
Prediction
It could be that I just can't see us losing one because the very thought of doing so is infuriating, but a 3-1 win for Villarreal is my prediction.