Villarreal vs Cadiz

Estadio de la Ceramica plays host to a high-stakes La Liga showdown between top-four hopefuls Villarreal and survival-chasing Cadiz.

Despite already securing European football for next season, Villarreal will likely miss out on Champions League qualification despite racking up four wins in their last five league games (D1). With fourth-placed Real Sociedad eight points up, ‘El Submarino Amarillo’ need a miracle to fight their way into the top four in the final three rounds. Not even a win over relegation-battling Cadiz is a certainty, considering Quique Setien’s men have only won 14% of their top-flight H2Hs (W1, D5, L1), drawing a blank in the last two on the trot (D1, L1). On a more positive note, they’ve won three consecutive home league matches in the build-up to this fixture and could register their best streak of back-to-back home wins in La Liga since winning four in a row in November 2020.

As for Cadiz, a 2-0 home win over Valladolid at the weekend helped the visitors arrest a two-game losing league run and move three points away from the red zone. However, they cannot afford to rest on their laurels if they’re to extend their three-year stay in La Liga, especially considering their penchants for dropping points on hostile turf. Sergio Gonzalez’s men have only won one of their last nine away league outings (D3, L5), failing to get on the scoresheet five times in this sequence. Despite Cadiz’s well-documented scoring woes, connoisseurs of action-packed football may look forward to this encounter, as two of the previous three La Liga clashes between these two sides in the province of Castellon have seen over 2.5 goals and both teams on the scoresheet.