This has the potential to be a tricky match for Barcelona despite Villarreal's troubles. Both teams will be missing a number of important players, which makes it an intriguing contest, but we are expecting the reigning La Liga champions to have enough quality to secure all three points on Saturday.
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Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Barcelona win with a probability of 61.97%. A draw had a probability of 19.6% and a win for Villarreal had a probability of 18.45%.
The most likely scoreline for a Barcelona win was 2-1 with a probability of 9.75%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-0 (8.54%) and 1-0 (7.66%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (8.74%), while for a Villarreal win it was 1-2 (4.99%). The actual scoreline of 3-5 was predicted with a 0.1% likelihood.