Pre-season Friendly Betting: Villareal v Liverpool

Villareal v Liverpool - Live on Sky Sports. Kick off 8.30pm.

Keano! There’s only one Keano!

It’ll be strange to hear the Kop belting out that particular anthem come the start of the season but Rafa may at last have found the ‘missing piece of the jigsaw’. The Liverpool fans certainly hope so. I think Robbie Keane will be great signing in the true Liverpool number 7 tradition. I’m looking forward to seeing him and Torres play together.

Tomorrow’s game against Villareal marks another step up in Liverpool’s pre-season preparations. The team from the Castellón region in Northern Spain produced their best ever domestic season last year finishing second, behind La Liga champions Real Madrid and ahead of Barcelona. That has given them automatic qualification into this year’s Champions League and they’ll be looking to better last season’s final 32 appearance.

Liverpool boss, Rafa Benitez will be without a handful of players for the match at the Madrigal. The ‘Olympic Three’ of Mascherano, Babel and Lucas are all missing and several players are carrying knocks including Gerrard, Voronin and Aurelio. Keeper Pepe Reina looks likely to miss out too having returned home to be with his pregnant wife. But the question being asked by the Liverpool faithful is will Robbie make his debut?

If he does you can get 9/4 (William Hill) on him scoring tomorrow night. He’s 6/1 (William Hill) to open the scoring and you wouldn’t put it past the little Irishman. Tomorrow should also see the return of the triumphant Fernando Torres and he’s 9/2 (Boylesports) to get the first goal, 6/4 (William Hill) to score anytime.

As for the game itself the bookies can’t separate the two sides. Villareal are 6/4 (888 Sport, Blue Sq, Boylesports, Paddy Power, VCBet, William Hill) and Liverpool are also 6/4 (888 Sport, Blue Sq, Coral, Paddy Power, Sportingbet, VCBet, William Hill). SkyBet have the draw at 13/5.

I wouldn’t be trying to predict how the game is going to go but the Keane dimension suggests to me that there might be goals in this one and I like the look of there being over 2.5 goals at 10/11 with Paddy Power.

Selectabet Offers:

• Open an account at Bet365 and claim £100 in free bets
• Open an account at Betfair and claim £25 in free bets
• Open an account at Paddy Power and claim £25 in free bets