Sevilla v Atletico Madrid: Late drama in Seville
Matchday nine in La Liga sees some mouthwatering clashes take place. Real Madrid face Valencia, Barcelona host Athletic Bilbao and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, leaders Atletico Madrid make the trip to face third place Sevilla at the Sanchez Pizjuan.
Both sides secured narrow midweek European wins and Sunday afternoon’s clash looks a well matched affair.
Sevilla finally got over their away day blues last weekend, letting a two-goal lead slip to newly promoted Leganes before snatching a 3-2 win right at the death, their first league win on the road in 23rd May 2015. That’s a quite astonishing run for the club who have claimed a hat-trick of Europa League titles in recent years but simply couldn’t pick up three points in the league away from home.
Back at the Sanchez Pizjuan, the hosts are 29/10 (3.90) on a Sevilla win, although that price and the draw (12/5) are both drifting across the board at the time of writing. The money is coming for Atletico though, they’ve been backed into odds-on favouritism at around 19/20 (1.95) with the online firm.
While there’s a case to be made for the visitors, their record this year has been far from stellar with draws to Alaves and Leganes in the early going. The top teams in Spain seem to be dropping points regularly which makes for an exciting contest but could mean they’re best avoided from a betting standpoint in potentially tricky games such as this one.
A trend that has emerged with these two sides recently is late goals. Just four of Sevilla’s strikes have come before half time in La Liga this term, with the vast majority of their goals occurring after the half time interval (12 of 16).
Likewise, Atletico have seen most of their goalscoring action after the break, with Diego Simeone’s side notching four times before the break and 17 times after. In fact, 38.1% of the visitors’ league goals have occurred in the final 15 minutes of matches.
Certainly in the league leaders’ case this could well be due to them needing time to break down opposition defences who are often set up to restrict and frustrate the likes of Antoine Griezmann, Kevin Gamerio and Yannick Carrasco.
With that in mind, backing the second half of this game to be the one that contains the most goals at 11/10 (2.10) with SkyBet certainly looks an appealing option for punters who are looking for an angle that tends to bear out in both the tactics and statistics involving these two teams.
Both sides played on the road in midweek and the first half could feel a little flat as neither team will want to give up an early advantage to the opposition. It could be reminiscent of a heavyweight boxing clash where the two competitors are very much feeling each other out before unleashing the more powerful blows as the contest wears on.
With both Real Madrid and Barcelona having tricky looking ties of their own this weekend, this is an opportunity not to be missed for these two sides who will have designs on Champions League football once again and in Atletico’s case, another tilt at the league title they won in 2014.
Take a look at Skybets latest odds on this game here