We said: Villarreal 1-2 Barcelona
Villarreal will be desperate to bounce back from the disappointment of the Man United result, and the Yellow Submarine have proved difficult to beat in La Liga this season. That said, Barcelona's record against Villarreal is so impressive, and we have a feeling that the Catalan outfit will shade a close contest.
Read more.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 46.82%. A win for Villarreal had a probability of 28.12% and a draw had a probability of 25.1%.
The most likely scoreline for a Barcelona win was 0-1 with a probability of 10.27%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 1-2 (9.32%) and 0-2 (8.05%). The likeliest Villarreal win was 1-0 (7.59%), while for a drawn scoreline it was 1-1 (11.89%). The actual scoreline of 1-3 was predicted with a 4.9% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole and our data analysis both correctly predicted that Barcelona would win this match.