Sevilla set for derby success against La Liga basement boys Betis

After losing the likes of Alvaro Negredo, Jesus Navas and Geoffrey Kondogbia among others over the summer, the 2013/14 season was always going to be a struggle for La Liga side Sevilla.

So it proved at the start of the campaign, with Los Nervionenses having to wait until their sixth top-flight game to register a win.

However, three losses before the end of September were against Spanish luminaries Atletico Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona and results have improved considerably since.

With La Liga bottom-club Real Betis up next at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan, Unai Emery’s charges can win at home for the fourth time in their last five attempts at odds of 8/11.

Sevilla won this fixture 5-1 this time last year when the Verdiblancos were comfortably in the top half of La Liga.

This season, Pepe Mel’s side have won just two of their 13 games so far in the division and recently suffered the ignominy of going down 2-1 at home to tiny promoted outfit Elche.

Betis are without a La Liga win since September and have lost six of their last eight games in the division.

A chance to remedy the situation against their local rivals may spur Mel’s boys on, but Sevilla posses one of the Spanish league’s in-form strikers in Croatian star Ivan Rakitic.

The former Schalke and Basle hitman has scored seven La Liga goals this season, including four in his last five games and is the pick at 13/2 to score the first goal of this encounter.

Defender Federico Fazio scored twice when Sevilla thumped their neighbours last year and grabbed the first goal last time out in his side’s 3-1 defeat of Espanyol.

He’s priced up at 25/1 odds to break the deadlock again here, but the 8/1 about the Argentinean centre-half scoring at any time looks a more sensible way to squeeze value out of this match.