Malaga VS Granada

Malaga challenge Granada in this LaLiga round 19 clash at Estadio La Rosaleda early Friday morning Beijing time. The biggest bookmakers with the largest betting market see Granada as solid favorites here and offer odds around 2.20 for them at the time of writing this preview at least. The main rationales behind this are this estimation is probably the league table and the fact that Granada played at the highest level of Spanish football last season and performed relatively okay at times.. They are also a quite big club by financial standards and players' total market value according to Transfermarkt.com. Even so, it has not been a good start for them and they are currently in the 7th place in the standings and have taken 28 points. Las Palmas, who top the standings have taken seven more points already. I have, as a result, lowered their power rating that reflects the teams' pure class. Granada have been very strong at home but extremely bad on the road! It seems the betting market has not given this factor enough emphasis. They have won just one – and lost six of the nine away games! Moreover, they have scored just twice and allowed 11 goals in these nine matches away from home in this league this season! Only Mirandes and Ibiza have been worse on the road.. Granada were very good in their most recent match though and defeated Alaves, a strong team, 3-1 after 77% ball possession. It seems the betting market has reacted quite heavily to this one more stronf performance at home. Before this they lost to Leganes 0-1 away from home and I would have expected more from them even taking the early red card they received into account..

Malaga have allowed a quite big number of goals - 22 - so far but have massively improved their defense recently! The bookmakers do not seem to have fully recognized this.. Indeed, Malaga have allowed just three goals in their latest four matches. Their defenders have recently made very few stupid mistakes and the defensive structure is also better than earlier this season. Furthermore, the midfielders also actively take part in defending now. In their most recent match they fought well away from home against a good team Levante despite losing 0-1. They were big underdogs in this clash – Levante were priced around 1.55 to win on the betting market. Levante did deserve the win but Malaga had their chances and even recorded more shots on goal (5-4). Levante did create more scoring chances though – 15-13. Let's not forget that Malaga are not a small club by players' total market value either – it is estimated at around 20 million euros which is too low in my view. Even so, Granada have an edge in all areas of the game.. They have a good but under-rated coach and certainly have a genuine chance to make it to top-15 before the season comes to an end. Before the loss against Levante Malaga defeated Ponforredina 1-0 at home after a very good defensive performance. Their offense was not not great though but they have the quality players to score much more goals per game than they have so far! Malaga are only marginal underdogs in front of their good fans here and we side with the with the +0.5 goals handicap option. A draw would be enough for my fans and me to win.