La Liga: Levante- Sporting Gijon
Hosts have won 2/3 at home and all three points would take the basement club level with their opponent and just two from safety. Gijon might well see a a point as valuable as it would retain that lead of three over their host and to within one of safety, but their next four starts look difficult ( Celta and Sevilla home and trips to Las Palmas and Barcelona) and surely they will target all three today, especially as the carrot that would bring would be 17th place and a spot outside the drop zone.
The visitors have had a long 16 days to bask in the glory of their fine 2-1 win over Atletico Madrid, who did the formline no harm by putting Betis to the sword, by scoring five on Saturday. Our oft used mantra of two struggling teams meeting equalling goals has always worked well and tends to go double at this time of year and I do not feel that either team will do themselves any favours by coming into this with a negative mindset and sooner or later, this will surely get stretched and with the pair having conceded 106 times between them, that goals will follow. Levante will take great heart from the three goals they scored in the reverse fixture and the last three h2h meetings have gone comfortably "over" ,including six first half goals.
Home coach Rubi said that he could not guarantee the win, but that his team would lack nothing in ambition and they only had three points in mind and he will be delighted that any lingering doubts about the participation of top scorer Deyverson has disappeared, especially as he scored a brace in the earlier h2h meeting and with Sporting missing suspended central defender Jorge Mere (already short of options in that position), he also missed the meeting in Gijon, so 2.75 for the Brazilian striker in the "anytime" market, or 9.0 -11.0 for him to score twice (two or more) are worth a second look. Sporting have conceded at least two goals in all six starts against the other bottom five teams and it is all too easy to make a case for them needing to score twice themselves to get anything at all out of this, but that is no totally lost cause.
Hosts are without left back Tono and they have lost 7 of the last ten starts he has sat out and Levante's five starts against bottom five teams this season have all gone "over".
Really hard to see either keeping a clean sheet and it has to be ............1.5 units "over" 2.5 goals 2.16 asian line/Sportmarket.
Sporting: Cuéllar, Alberto García, Luis Hernández, Lichnovsky, Sergio Álvarez, Guerrero, Nacho Cases, Lora, Carlos Castro, Mascarell, Isma López, Carmona, Sanabria, Vranjes, Pablo Pérez, Jony, Rachid, Halilovic , Dani Ndi.
Levante have actually won seven home second halves, a number only bettered by the top four and Sevilla. They have done most of that damage early in the second 45 minutes with a very solid 7-1 goals difference between the 50th and 71st minute, but they have conceded a league high eight home goals in the final 15 .
Good Luck.
