Villarreal's defeats to bottom-half teams in their last two matches will provide some optimism for an Espanyol side who are struggling for form themselves and can ill-afford to drop too many more points in their battle to avoid relegation.
Nevertheless, the hosts will be regarded as favourites to come out on top on Thursday and they should have enough quality in their side to record a routine win at the Estadi de la Ceramica.
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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 Villarreal win with a probability of 62.84%. A draw had a probability of 21% and a win for Espanyol had a probability of 16.11%.
The most likely scoreline for a Villarreal win was 1-0 with a probability of 11.29%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-0 (11.16%) and 2-1 (9.89%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (10%), while for a Espanyol win it was 0-1 (5.06%). The actual scoreline of 4-2 was predicted with a 1.4% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole and our data analysis both correctly predicted that Villarreal would win this match.
0.53) 
-0.22) 
