Injury impact

There are two very attrac­tive matchups this week­end but both fix­tures look to be impacted heav­ily by injuries (or travel exhaus­tion) suf­fered by key players.

First let’s look at the Real Madrid v Espanyol match. Real Madrid will be with­out Arjen Robben, Robinho and Gabriel Heinze for their trip to Barcelona. A poten­tial boost to the Madrid squad could come from Guti and Fabio Can­navaro. Both had ini­tially been doubt­ful for Saturday’s game, but both returned to train­ing on Thurs­day and could start against Espanyol.

This is a hard game to call as Espanyol has been hot and cold. They beat Sevilla and Valen­cia, but strug­gled against Deportivo and Getafe. They are sit­ting in good shape though hav­ing won four of their last five matches and are in fifth place at the moment. Angel Mar­tinez, David Gar­cia, Javi Chica, Rufete and Fran­cisco Javier Mar­tinez are all unavail­able for Espanyol, but play­maker Ivan De La Pena could return from a knee injury after four months out.

The other matchup we’re going to look at is the Vil­lar­real — Barcelona match. With a win and Madrid loss, Barca could go top of the table this week­end. How­ever, Barca will be with­out Samuel Eto’o, Rafael Mar­quez, Gian­luca Zam­brotta, Yaya Toure and per­haps most impor­tantly, Ronald­inho. Ronald­inho is not injured but has been left out of the squad after return­ing late from inter­na­tional duty with Brazil.

Vil­lar­real will be miss­ing top scorer Giuseppe Rossi (sus­pen­sion), Gon­zalo Rodriguez (also sus­pended) and cen­tral mid­fielder Josico (injury). The papers have been antic­i­pat­ing that man­ager Pel­le­grini would deploy two hold­ing mid­field­ers but with­out Josico a change of for­ma­tion might be in the cards.

The match is being played at El Madri­gal and Barcelona lost 2–0 there last sea­son. The one thing going in Barca’s favour is the form of Lionel Messi. He has been on fire the last few weeks and if his form con­tin­ues he could be the difference-maker in the match.

There is one other impor­tant match that I’d like to touch on briefly. Sevilla find them­selves at the wrong end of the table and need to pick up max­i­mum points from their match with fel­low rel­e­ga­tion bat­tlers Lev­ante. Lev­ante are really strug­gling with just one point, 17 goals con­ceded and just 1 goal scored. They are eas­ily the worst team in La Liga in all those categories.

Sevilla are also in trou­ble and the prospects are not good going into this match. They will be with­out star striker Fred­eric Kanoute, cap­tain Javi Navarro, Alexan­der Kerzhakov, Julien Escude, Enzo Maresca and Aquiv­aldo Mos­quera. All of those play­ers are side­lined with var­i­ous injuries.

On the plus side, Khalid Boulahrouz has been passed fit and per­mis­sions has been granted by the league to add Ernesto Chevan­ton to the squad. The club was unable to add him to the 25-man squad they reg­is­tered for this sea­son because of the lim­ited num­ber of non-European Union play­ers allowed to each club in La Liga. How­ever, spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion was given to Sevilla to add a replace­ment player to their ros­ter because of the death of wing-back Anto­nio Puerta. Ivory Coast striker Arouna Kone has recently gained Euro­pean Union cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus, so that allowed Sevilla to nom­i­nate Chevan­ton for their ros­ter. Chevan­ton has good spells at Lecce and Monaco so it will be intereting to see if he can repeat that in La Liga.

Lev­ante will be with­out David Castedo against his for­mer club due to injury, while Brazil­ian for­ward Savio Bor­tolini is also a doubt.

Other matches in La Liga this week­end:
Deportivo — Valen­cia
Alme­ria — Osasuna
Val­ladolid — Ath­letic Bil­bao
Betis — Rac­ing
Getafe — Mur­cia
Recre­ativo — Mal­lorca
Atletico de Madrid — Zaragoza