Albacete arrive at Valladolid with one point from eight games, a new coach who has had a handful of training sessions, and a squad list the club has decided not to publish. The tempting read is "bottom side, nothing to lose, easy visit for 17th place". I'd be slower than that, because Valladolid's own coach is publicly warning that this is the team in the division with the fewest points relative to what it deserves, and Valladolid have already dropped points to a bottom side this season.
What the match records show for Albacete is a team losing without being dominated. At home to Eibar they had 22 shots to 8 and lost 1-3. At Girona it was 20 shots to 18 and a 0-2 defeat. Their one real beating, at Castellon on Sept 7, was 6 shots to 26 and xG 0.30 to 4.09, so the underlying picture is uneven rather than uniformly awful. Joseba Etxeberria was presented on Oct 5 after Alberto González was dismissed on Oct 3, and this is his first game on the bench. He has talked about a group hurt in its pride, which is what a new coach says, but it does matter that the opponent has almost nothing to study. Fran Escribá said in his pre-match press conference that the only footage he had of the new Albacete was a 1-0 loss to Talavera.
Valladolid are the other half of this. They drew 2-2 at Las Palmas, beat Cordoba 3-1 at home, drew 1-1 at Ceuta when Ceuta were last, and lost 0-3 at home to Oviedo. Escribá says the diamond 4-4-2 has brought more arrivals in the box and more speed, but he also named concentration lapses at the back that "usually get paid for", and the record shows 11 conceded in 8. Albacete have won three of the last four meetings, including the 1-0 at Valladolid in January, though that is a small sample with a different coach on each side of it.
So I wouldn't frame this as form against form. The thing to watch is whether a side with a good shot count and a bad result column gets its first reward under a coach nobody has scouted, against a side that scores more freely than it defends. Albacete have several injured players ruled out (Obeng, Puertas, Pepe Sánchez, Capi and one more defender, per the EFE preview), and the goalkeeper choice between Mariño and Marín was still open at the last report. Sergio Ortuño is back from suspension.
Sources: our match records (Valladolid and Albacete last matches and shot data), Infobae/EFE preview of Oct 11, El Gol Digital press conference report of Oct 10. Some results in our DB are still marked provisional.
