Neither side looks able to carry much attacking threat here. Las Palmas are reported to be missing up to eleven players, most of them forwards and midfielders, and Valladolid have barely scored on their travels. My read is that this is a cagey game where the real question is whether either team can create enough, and I lean towards them struggling to.
The Las Palmas club site put the absence list at up to eleven for this one, and the bulk of it sits in the front and middle of the pitch. Two centre-backs are also out, so the home side are not clean at the back either, which is why I did not simply back them to win. They are a home team with little to attack with, not a dominant one.
Valladolid are the other half of it. In their last ten matches they managed only two goals across five away games, and the local paper Diario de Valladolid noted before this game that they have not won away from home in close to nine months. A visitor who rarely scores walking into a home side short of forwards is not a recipe for an open, end-to-end game.
The market sees it as a tight game too, with the home side only a slight favourite and the draw priced almost level with the away win. The Las Palmas price drifted only a little after the injury news, so I do not think the thin attack is fully built into how the game is priced. That is the angle I am taking: two attacks short of firepower.
I would rather not pick a winner in a game like this. The part I trust is the lack of cutting edge on both sides.
