The summary of this page: estimated level of play, form trend and qualitative verdict. For the details, head to the other tabs.
Editors' ratings
7/10
Attack
7/10
Defence
5/10
Form
5/10
Confidence / mood
Current risk:—
14th with 3 pts from 2 matches: 1 win, 0 draws, 1 defeat.
5 goals scored, 4 conceded.
Among them is the duel next Tuesday in one of the European football cots, the Anfield Stadium of Liverpool, which will face the English team with the Villarreal. I find where the yellow team arrives after the victory at home 3-1 to Naples and will be pounded by Polish collegiate Szymon Marciniak, one of the best collegiates in Europe.
The tie to zero between the Villarreal and the Elche had a moment where the encounter could have changed when the collegiate Víctor García Verdura pointed a maximum penalty in favor of the Elche at 59 minutes of meeting. All for a possible grip from Alberto Moleiro to Roy Revivo. & nbsp;
It will be a tense time for club’s president despite the Champions League game at Anfield offering a symbol of how far they have come The first time Fernando Roig watched Villarreal play as their president, he sat in the stand at a tiny whitewashed ground that had concrete fever and was half empty. It was a Sunday night in the second division, they lost 3-0 to Badajoz, and he didn’t enjoy it much.
Match-by-match results, record and rhythm of the current season.
Latest matches
Wvs SSC Napoli (H) · 3-1
Lvs Borussia Dortmund (A) · 2-3
WL
5 scored / 4 conceded over 2 matches played
Rest: 5 days since the last match · 1 match played in the last 15 days
Home form
1W - 0D - 0L
Away form
0W - 0D - 1L
Statistics
Computed from this season's scores, every time the page is shown.
Goals scored per match
2.5
Goals conceded per match
2.0
At home
3 scored · 1 conceded in 1 match
Away
2 scored · 3 conceded in 1 match
Over 2.5 goals
2 of 2
Both teams score
2 of 2
Clean sheets
0 of 2
Failed to score
0 of 2
Cumulative points vs league average
Not enough matchdays recorded yet for this curve — history builds up with every standings refresh.
How Villarreal CF play
System, playing identity, and what sets the team apart at both ends of the pitch.
Playing identity
Preferred system
4-2-3-1
Philosophy
Attacking strengths
Defensive solidity
Pressing
Transitions
Strength
Weakness
The mood around the club, and who is missing
Internal climate, relationship with the supporters, and known absences before the next match.
Mood
Squad confidence
Middling, pending a first real reference point. Villarreal played their first three matchdays away, taking two draws at Santander and the Metropolitano and losing 1-0 at Mendizorroza: two points, four goals scored, five conceded. Iñigo Pérez summed up the problem himself after Vitoria — plenty of chances, no conversion, and goals conceded that need fixing. The club nonetheless goes into September with two concrete reasons for optimism: the season's first home game on Saturday against Deportivo, and a Champions League campaign starting three days later at Dortmund. The promotion of three Cantera Grogueta youngsters to the first team also widens options left thin by a window with two signings.
Coach / players / board relationship
Still new but calm. Iñigo Pérez, who arrived from Rayo Vallecano on 1 June 2026 on a three-year deal, was preferred to an extension for Marcelino García Toral, and the board has shown no sign of impatience despite the lack of a win. The club committed to a summer of continuity, with only Péter Gulácsi and Nathan Saliba as signings, several outgoing loans and the internal promotion of three academy players. The coach himself presented Saliba as the addition that allows them to absorb the twin load of LaLiga and the Champions League. No disagreement between bench and boardroom appears in the sources consulted.
Mood with the supporters
La Cerámica will finally see its team: three away trips in a row opened the season, and Saturday's visit of Deportivo is the first home fixture. On 2 September the club announced it had passed 19,000 season-ticket holders, around 82% of a ground reduced to 23,173 seats after renovation, a rate that puts Villarreal among the best-supported clubs relative to their size. The trip to Dortmund on 8 September is already mobilising fans: away tickets went on sale at 50 euros for season-ticket holders, peñistas and supporters, until midday on 7 September. The prospect of hosting PSG, Napoli and Manchester United at La Cerámica is the main argument of this season-ticket campaign. The mood of the crowd therefore remains to be established, having not yet been expressed.
Pressure on the head coach
Low despite the lack of a win. Iñigo Pérez has the credit of a three-year contract, the mitigating context of three consecutive away trips and the Champions League opener, a competition he himself named as the big objective on arrival. His message remains analytical rather than defensive: he points to a lack of attacking efficiency and defensive lapses without looking for excuses. No source consulted suggests his position is in question. The run of Deportivo, Dortmund, Betis, Málaga and Levante in sixteen days will, however, give a first serious measure of his work.
Club objectives
Confirming their European standing after a third place and 72 points in 2025-26, and acquitting themselves well in a second consecutive Champions League. The draw produced a demanding set: PSG, Napoli, Sabah and Manchester United at home, Dortmund, Liverpool, Slavia Prague and Fenerbahçe away, from 8 September to 27 January. Betfair summed up the ambition as maintaining their level in LaLiga and progressing in Europe and in the Copa del Rey. In the very short term the objective is simpler: finally winning, at home, against a promoted side. The academy remains the third pillar, with three Cantera Grogueta players integrated into the first-team squad.
Recent internal tensions
No internal tension reported by the sources consulted. The only identified area of fragility is sporting and structural: the unreplaced departure of three senior midfielders, Dani Parejo and Thomas Partey out of contract and Ramón Terrats sold to Getafe, along with Alfonso Pedraza. The club answered with a single signing in that position, Nathan Saliba, and with the promotion of young players. The treatment room, with Juan Foyth expected in early October, also deprives the defence of its leader. Nothing, however, suggests any strain between the dressing room, the head coach and the board.
Absences
InjuredJuan Foyth — Cruciate ligament rupture, return expected at the beginning of October 2026.
DoubtfulGerard Moreno — Physical discomfort reported in August, his availability still to be confirmed.
DoubtfulSergi Cardona — Physical discomfort reported in August, doubtful for the coming fixtures.
Before kick-off
What to know before the next match: statistical form, qualitative analysis, and a computed estimate of the 1/X/2 probabilities.
Next match
Liverpool — Villarreal CF
AwayTuesday 20 October at 21:00Matchday 3
In 2 days. Kick-off time confirmed by the league. Paris time · football-data.org fixtures.
Árbitro de mal recuerdo en el Liverpool-VillarrealThis Sunday the UEFA has made known the collegiates of the third day of the league of Champions. Among them is the duel next Tuesday in one of the European football cots, the Anfield Stadium of Liverpool, which will face the English team with the Villarreal. I find where the yellow team arrives after the victory at home 3-1 to Naples and will be pounded by Polish collegiate Szymon Marciniak, one of the best collegiates in Europe.Mundo Deportivo · 18 Oct 2026 · machine-translated
‘I suffer a lot’: Villarreal owner Fernando Roig on not enjoying games and the prospect of LiverpoolIt will be a tense time for club’s president despite the Champions League game at Anfield offering a symbol of how far they have come The first time Fernando Roig watched Villarreal play as their president, he sat in the stand at a tiny whitewashed ground that had concrete fever and was half empty. It was a Sunday night in the second division, they lost 3-0 to Badajoz, and he didn’t enjoy it much. But then, he doesn’t ever enjoy it much. Even on Tuesday at Anfield, he will not: into his 30th year, the longest presidency in Europe, that is about the only thing that hasn’t changed. More than 1,000 games and still it happens. “I don’t get nervous. It’s worse: I get worried, very anxious,” he says. “I suffer a lot. Continue reading...The Guardian — Football · 18 Oct 2026
Prediction
EstimateLiverpool — Villarreal CF
58 %
1 · Liverpool
17 %
X · draw
25 %
2 · Villarreal CF
In-house calculation, from this page's standings data alone: 2 matches played by Liverpool, 2 matches by Villarreal CF. Confidence: low
The calculation rests on only 2 matches per team. Shrinkage deliberately pulls the estimate close to a neutral split: it barely tells the two teams apart.
The formula, in plain words — with this match's figures
League average. 141 goals scored over 68 team-matches played (34 teams taken into account), i.e. μ = 2.07 goal scored per team per match. This is the reference point: everything that follows is expressed relative to it.
Attacking and defensive strengths. Goals scored (or conceded) per match, divided by μ. 1.00 = exactly average; in defence, above 1.00 means “concedes more than average”.
TeamGoalsRawKept
Liverpool — attack8 in 2 matches1.931.23
Liverpool — defence4 in 2 matches0.960.99
Villarreal CF — attack5 in 2 matches1.211.05
Villarreal CF — defence4 in 2 matches0.960.99
The “Kept” column is the result of shrinkage towards the mean: weight = P / (P + 6), i.e. 0.25 for Liverpool and 0.25 for Villarreal CF. The rest of the weight goes to the league average. This is what stops a lone 5-0 from producing an attack at 3.3 times the average — and hence a 95% probability.
Home advantage (γ). Measured on the league itself: 2.47 goal scored on average by the host against 1.68 by the visitor, over the 34 fixtures present in each team's last 5 matches. Raw ratio 1.47; shrunk towards 1 (weight 0.36, on the log of the ratio) then capped at 1.25 → γ = 1.15. Shrinkage goes towards 1, i.e. no advantage at all: while the sample is small, the model does not assert a home advantage it cannot measure.
Venue correction, specific to each team. Drawn from the home/away split: points per match at the venue concerned are compared to points per match over all fixtures, with stronger shrinkage (weight = P / (P + 8)) and a bound of ±12%.
Liverpool at home: 3.00 pts/match versus 3.00 overall over 1 match → ×1.000 Villarreal CF away: 0.00 pts/match versus 1.50 overall over 1 match → ×0.889
Expected goals. One side's attack is set against the other's defence. γ applies to the host only: applying it the other way round too would count the home advantage twice.
Poisson grid. Probability of every exact score from 0-0 to 8-8, assuming the two goal totals are independent, then adding up the cells: home win 58.4%, draw 17.1%, away win 24.5% — displayed rounded to whole numbers so that they add up to exactly 100. Most likely exact score in the grid: 2-1 (only 6.5%, which says enough about how unpredictable an exact score is).
Limits of this model — they are not anecdotal.
It only knows goals and a venue. Neither absences, suspensions, line-ups, fatigue, stakes, weather nor club context enter the calculation — while the other tabs of this page show that they matter.
The assumption that the two goal totals are independent is false in reality: it slightly underestimates tight scores, hence the draw.
γ is measured over a rolling window (each team's last 5 matches), not over the whole season.
The shrinkage constants (6, 60, 8) and the bounds are choices, not measurements. They were tuned to be cautious early in the season; they were not calibrated on a results history, as none is available here.
No after-the-fact evaluation has been made: at this stage, nobody knows whether this model is better or worse calibrated than another.
What other sources say
No external source has been collected for this match. That is the normal state: readings are taken by hand, and an empty box is better than an unverified figure.
This block shows probability estimates, not predictions, and carries no advisory value. The in-house estimate is the result of a formula applied to a small sample; the figures from external sources are reproduced as they were collected, without their method having been verified.
The full squad
The professional squad by position, captain marked with an armband.
Squad not documented for this team yet.
What has been said recently
Chronological feed of verified information about the club.
Matchday 4 finally brings the season's first match at La Cerámica: Villarreal host RC Deportivo on Saturday 5 September at 21:00, after three consecutive away trips that yielded only two points.
The club has passed the 19,000 season-ticket mark for 2026-27, around 82% of a Cerámica taken to 23,173 seats after a renovation that redistributed the stands and improved evacuation arrangements.
Away tickets for Borussia Dortmund v Villarreal, on Tuesday 8 September at 21:00 at the Signal Iduna Park, went on sale at 50 euros, reserved for season-ticket holders, peñistas and supporters, until midday on Monday 7 September or while stocks last.
Three Cantera Grogueta players now wear a first-team squad number: Alicante-born midfielder Carlos Maciá (16), Valencian goalkeeper Rubén Gómez (13) and Senegal-born defender Alassane Diatta (5), all working under Iñigo Pérez.
Only two signings over the summer: goalkeeper Peter Gulácsi bought for €1.5m from Leipzig and midfielder Nathan Saliba signed for €15m from Anderlecht.
The kick-off times for matchdays 5, 6 and 7 are confirmed: Villarreal v Real Betis on Monday 14 September at 21:00 at La Cerámica, Málaga v Villarreal on Thursday 17 September at 21:30 at La Rosaleda, then Villarreal v Levante on Sunday 20 September at 18:30.
A third matchday without a win: a 1-0 defeat at Mendizorroza against Alavés (Lucas Boyé, 31). Iñigo Pérez: “Hemos tenido muchas ocasiones y no hemos materializado”, “debemos corregir por qué encajamos los goles”.
The Champions League league-phase draw is known: Villarreal will host PSG, Napoli, Sabah FC and Manchester United at La Cerámica, and travel to Borussia Dortmund, Liverpool, Slavia Prague and Fenerbahçe. The campaign begins on 8 September at Dortmund and closes on 27 January against Manchester United.
Canadian midfielder Nathan Saliba, signed from Anderlecht (€15m according to FutbolFantasy and Fichajes), joins Villarreal; Iñigo Pérez sees him as an addition to help absorb the twin load of LaLiga and the Champions League.
News last verified on 18 Oct 2026. Sources: sports press (L'Équipe, Le Parisien, Foot Mercato, regional press…) and official club websites — see the link on each item.
Editorial content (playing style, mood, absences, external prediction sources) last verified on 3 Sep 2026. The standings/form data above are refreshed automatically — as is the 1/X/2 estimate, recomputed on every view.
