Sevilla face Barcelona in this La Liga Round 18 clash at Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán early Wednesday morning Beijing time. An intense, balanced and probably an entertaining match - with hopefully quite a lot of goals is expected. Let's take a closer at the match betting-wise..

Sevilla have exceeded my - and probably many other experts, their fans and most likely their own expectations this season and are currently in second place in La Liga, six points behind the current leaders, Real Madrid. However, in the Champions League Sevilla faced a major disappointment and in this competition some of their vulnerabilities and lack of a sufficient number of absolute top-class players were exposed.. They had a chance to qualify for the playoff rounds in the final group stage match versus an opponent they had a good chance to beat, FC Red Bull Salzburg. However, Salzburg, of course, do have many young talented players like Karim Adeyemi. Sevilla controlled the first half of the match and did create scoring chances but lacked offensive creativity and failed to score. In the 50th minute Noah Okafor scored the winning goal for Salzburg. Later on, Sevilla's glimmer of hope faded away when Joan Jordan was sent off. There were the also the French champions Lille, the eventual group winners, in this group, a smaller team than Sevilla in the group, so Sevilla really should have qualified! Barcelona also failed to qualify but this group was much tougher as there was top-3 team in the World, Bayern Munich, and also Benfica, a surprisingly good team, in the group. 

Sevilla have scored a lot more points than they should have in terms of expected points so far this season in La Liga. They have 37 points in the bank but the expected points number is only 27 points! This is a huge difference and has led to an over-valuation in the betting market. In addition, they have scored 5.20 goals more than the expected goals numbers would suggest and allowed 5.80 less than they realistically should have. A good example of a very undeserved three points is the 2-1 win on the 18th of December versus Atletico Madrid at home. They created only 0.37 in expected goals whereas the visitors' number was 1.25. Barcelona, on the hand have been very unlucky this season. In terms of expected points they should have scored six points more than their current number of points in the bank - 27 that is. I have previously written many times about Barcelona nowadays being far from the level they were at a few years ago. Messi is gone and so is Suarez and they financial situation is grim.. However, finally the betting market has also realized this and as a result Barcelona or no longer over-valued - perhaps even the opposite in some matches. With the club legend Xavi as the new manager the future looks good for Barca but it will take a at least few years to reach the level of Bayern Munchen or Manchester City. The huge potential is definitely there as there are many very promising players in the squad. Both teams will be missing many players today.

To sum up, the visitors have a good chance to take at least a point. Barcelona +1 goals with the 1x2 handicap is my pick for my fans here.