Villarreal 2-0 Athletic Bilbao and more Champions League :D

Arsenal/Gunner Apology

First off let me apologize for my whole “voyeur” comment. It strictly was meant for a bit of laughing from the reference from IOSS/Special1TV. So Anon I’m sorry if I offended your club, same goes to all you Gunners. More on drawing Arsenal for the Champions League in a bit. First some great news from La Liga as Villarreal takes the win 2-0 against Athletic Bilbao.

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Mati can fly!
The overall performance of this game was the model on how we have to play. If anyone saw this game I’m sure they’d agree. It wasn’t to the point where we were going all out to score a goal, or so lazy to where the opponent had chances like none other. Villarreal played in a smooth team like formation. Everyone had their roles and executed it perfectly. It was more slow forwarded, but we kept possession and the upper hand.

First Half

Nihat and Rossi make such a great pair. I love seeing them play together. They’re the Torres/Villa of Villarreal. A few minutes after kickoff Nihat had his first shot at goal. Sadly he didn’t have enough power or move on the ball to finish. Great attempt though. Throughout the rest of the first half resulted in one of the sides end field. We defended any chances Bilbao had against us and did our job fine. Couldn’t finish, but I’m sure they were happy not conceding any goals. Especially after facing Atletico and being scored on like nothing.

Second Half

Magic. I love me some football magic. First off the mess up that our Captain made when he was trying (???) to clear the ball out of our backside. Also, the Rossi run in the start of the second half resulted to a great pass to Cazorla. Very simply footie from there on out. A shot on the right side of the goal and it goes in. 1-0 Villarreal. It must of been a bad day for players, or a day of red cards. Susaeta gets sent off for a rough play and ends up putting Bilbao in defense mode. Fernandez’s run down the middle of the box was no match for the defense and the keeper. Great foot work and excellent goal. 2-0.

Highlights

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Final Stats:

Villarreal 2-0 Athletic Bilbao
Cazorla 68
Matias Fernandez 91

Shots (on Goal) 16(7) 15(5)
Fouls 21 21
Corner Kicks 6 5
Offsides 4 2
Time of Possession 62% 38%
Yellow Cards 4 1
Red Cards 0 1
Saves 5 5

Villarreal: Diego Lopez – Angel, Godin, Fuentes, Capdevila – Senna, Cani, Cazorla, Ibagaza (Fernandez 82) – Nihat (Llorente 65), Rossi (Bruno 88)

Athletic Bilbao: Iraizoz – Iraola, Ocio, Amorebieta, Koikili – Javi Martinez, Orbaiz (Ion Velez 86), Susaeta, Gabilondo – Toquero (Garmnendia 56), Llorente

Yellow Cards: Capdevila 6, Ibagaza 21, Susaeta 33, Eguren 60, Amorebieta 74, Senna 79

Red Cards: Susaeta 78

La Liga

So that leaves us at our Champions League qualifier spot in La Liga. Mmmm. Sevilla tore it up today and kept their fancy 6 point lead. Atletico still has yet to play, so the gap between us and them is still undetermined. Lets just hope they…tie. That’s good sportsmanship. Right? Yeah I think so. Somewhere in one of the Champions League discussion things on the side on ESPNsoccernet.com (You know, that really annoying automatic video that plays when you visit the site) started saying how Villarreal doesn’t care about La Liga anymore. That its all about Champions League football. I found that to be a bit…rubbish. We were and still are in a good position in the table. Sure Sevilla is up two games point wise but its not over. We still have a chance to secure a CL spot and that is quite important to us. 4th is not enough for how much we worked for this year. I would love to be all hopeful and say we COULD win the league, but that would require Barca and Madrid to have a losing streak……it can happen…damnit stop daydreaming. Anyways, yes, the Champions League is important to us, mainly because of how well were doing, but by all means does that mean that La Liga is 2nd class to us.

Champions Leauge

Champions League quarter final is coming up guys. Its a big one for a lot of us. If many of you didn’t know, we faced Arsenal in the 2006 Quarter Finals and lost due to penalties. Not my idea of going out in a bang. Its time to show them that were a better team from before (and less Forlanless). Pires is especially excited for this match up being a former Gunner. He says:

“Cleary it’s going to be a special game. It makes me very happy to return there and nowadays, as a Villarreal player, I want to win so I can continue in the competition with my team.”
“It’s going to be a very difficult game. I have no feelings of revenge for that semi-final, right now the only thing going through my head is to knock them out because I’m at Villarreal,”

Special game, I can agree to that. I’m excited for this clash . Goal scorer Cazorla also had some things to say about this matchup with Arsenal from a minor interview from the Villarreal website.

“We’ve shown our true level”
“We had to change, especially the bad image we had in the Vicente Calderón against Atlético. With this important victory, we have shown our true level and won three very important points to follow in the ranking”

Quite so. It should be epic and a great game to watch for all. We take the Gunners on the 7th of April. Bonus picture of Pires in a Arsenal shirt!

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Vamos Villarreal!!

Category: Villarreal Team News

Tags: Arsenal, Champions League, Gunners, La Liga, Villarreal, Villarreal Team News

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