Alaves vs Valencia

Any Alaves vs Valencia prediction this week starts with the table. Alaves are second with 10 points from four played (W3 D1 L0), 10 scored and three conceded, their best start in 25 years. Quique Sánchez Flores was named La Liga's coach of the month for August. Valencia are twentieth with one point from four (W0 D1 L3): one goal scored, nine conceded, and a 0-5 home beating by Barcelona still fresh.

Valencia are in a crisis on every reading of the word. Three straight league defeats, bottom of the division, no goal in three of the four matches, and a coach who spent the Barcelona post-match saying his side were second best from first minute to last and that the whole club has to find the answers. The treatment room has made it worse: Mouctar Diakhaby tore an adductor against Barcelona and is out until mid-October, José Copete and Dimitri Foulquier are also out, and César Tárrega is the only experienced senior centre-back left standing.

Alaves are not in a crisis, but their week has been grim in its own way. They lost Mikel Rodríguez to a cruciate ligament rupture in training on 4 September and Facundo Garcés to the same injury five days later; both are gone for the season. Toni Martínez has been out since 1 September with a soleus tear and is a genuine doubt here. And still they put five past Osasuna, Lucas Boyé taking a hat-trick. Sánchez Flores, who managed Valencia himself, has built a side that defends deep, cedes the ball happily and punishes on the break.

The scoring gap is the whole match. In four La Liga matches Alaves have scored 10 and conceded three, with two clean sheets; at home in three they have scored nine and conceded two. Valencia have scored one and conceded nine, and have failed to score in three of the four. Their single clean sheet was a goalless home draw with Celta Vigo in which they managed 0.58 xG.

Read the underlying numbers and the picture softens, but only a little. Alaves create 1.46 xG a game and give up 0.93; Valencia create 0.94 and give up 1.72. So Alaves are finishing far above expectation - 10 goals from 5.8 xG across the four - and that will not last. Valencia are finishing far below it, and that will not last either. What survives the correction is the shape of it: one side generates half again as much as it concedes, the other the reverse.

Both point the same way for the total. Neither team has been in a high-scoring match at Mendizorrotza in this fixture for years: the last four league meetings there produced 0-0, 1-0, 1-0 and 2-1, and none of the four had more than one goal before the interval. Alaves have led at half-time in two of four this season and never trailed; Valencia have led at half-time in none of four and trailed in two.

Valencia's matches are quiet at the flag. Across four La Liga matches with statistics they have won 3.8 corners a game and conceded 3.2, a total of 7.0 per match against a league average of 9.95. Only once in four have their games passed 9.5.

Alaves are busier - 5.2 won, 5.5 conceded, 10.8 per match - but that number is inflated by the night at Villarreal's expense when they had 24% of the ball and defended for long stretches. Add the two attacking rates together and you get 9.0 corners, a full corner below the league line, and a Valencia side that has been happier without the ball than with it this season.