I love the double chance market here and want to back Los Blancos to either win this game or take a point back to Madrid. They come into this in good form, with the team winning both of new manager Arbeloa’s games so far. Even looking back across the whole season, this is a team who have impressed on the road.

They’ve only lost one of their games away from the Bernabeu, and that came across the city against Atletico, back in September. They’ve conceded 1.1 goals per game away from home in La Liga, but fortunately, they’re the league’s second-highest road scorer, and with the attacking talents at their disposal, they’re always ripe to outscore their rivals.

Villarreal have been phenomenal at home this season, with just one loss, but look across all competitions, and that’s now two defeats at home in their past three games. Expand that to all games, and they’ve won just two of their past six. With the feel-good vibe returning to Real’s squad, they should take something from this game.

I’m confident that we’ll see plenty of goals on Saturday. Historically, this matchup has always been one that is high scoring, with eight of the last games between these clubs, at Estadio de la Ceramica finishing with over 2.5 goals.

Looking in more detail at their games this season, there have been over 2.5 goals in six of Villarreal’s ten games at home. There’s only been one game in which they’ve been shut out from scoring, and that was the game against Barcelona, in which they finished with just 10 men. They’ve only failed to score in three games all season in the league, and will fancy their chances against a Real Madrid backline that have only given up two fewer goals than them.

As for Real themselves, this is a team who have averaged over two goals per game on their own, let alone including the opposition. We’ve also seen both of Arbeloa’s games so far end with Real scoring at least two. Real have only been stopped from scoring twice all season, and have scored in all but one on the road. Across 10 away games, there have been over 2.5 goals in seven.

Real’s French star Kylian Mbappe was a lot of the blame for the departure of Xabi Alonso, but he’s been exceptional this season. He scored a brace midweek against Monaco to make it 11 goals in six Champions League games, as he ended up scoring both of his two shots on target against his former club. He also scored against Levante in Arbeloa’s first game as manager and finished with three shots on target too.

With 19 goals in 19 league games, he’s been unstoppable and unsurprisingly, he leads the league in shots on target with 85 across his La Liga season to date. That’s miles clear of the 48 of his nearest rival, Robert Lewandowski, and even further ahead of his next teammate, Vinicius Junior, who has 28. He’s averaged a mind-blowing 2.62 shots on target per 90 minutes played, and with Villarreal allowing 13.1 shots per game, the sixth most in La Liga, we’ll see Mbappe get plenty of chances to have two shots on target.

Vinicius has had a good season this year, and although he and Mbappe still play in the same left channel sometimes, they’re beginning to work each other out. There’s one area that the Brazilian still hasn’t worked out yet, and that’s with his discipline.

He’s undoubtedly a gifted player, but with roughly the same number of yellow cards as goals, there are questions to be asked about the way in which he lets the occasion get the better of him. He gives up a lot of fouls, which is unusual for attacking players, and can often be petulant if he gets involved in physical battles with the opponents.

He’s averaged 1.2 fouls per 90 minutes played in La Liga this season and has also committed a foul in both of Arbeloa’s two games in charge of the team so far. Villarreal will know what they need to do to wind him up here.