Valencia vs Celta Vigo 02/02/20

2 February 2020

Valencia will return to La Liga (LL) action a few days after an exhausting penalty-shootout win over Leonesa in Coppa del Rey, as they welcome out-of-sorts Celta Vigo to the Estadio de Mestalla.

Valencia remain one of three teams still unbeaten at home in LL this season (W6, D5), with just 27% of their LL home fixtures producing over 2.5 goals. Even though they’ve scored only 18 home goals so far on an average of 1.45 goals per LL home match, Albert Celades’ men have still managed to break the deadlock in nine of 11 such outings. A potential worry for Celades could be that the Oranges usually zone out after the break, as 70% of their LL goals conceded here arrived in the second half. That could be particularly significant now, considering that five of the last six goals they’ve shipped in LL home H2Hs with Celta arrived in the second 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, the visitors head to the Mestalla on a run of seven straight league matches without a win (D5, L2), and that’s mainly thanks to their inability to hold on the lead. Indeed, they opened the scoring in four of those games before letting the lead slip through their hands in the final 20 minutes of play (D3, L1). Arguably one of the weakest away teams in LL, the Celts have picked up just one win in ten league road trips, losing six of the other nine (D3). Frustratingly for the traveling side, all of those failures have seen them concede over 1.5 goals, with five witnessing Celta ship the opener.