Real Madrid – Espanyol. Mark O’Haire’s prediction (VIDEO)

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Real Madrid missed a fantastic chance to close in on city neighbours Atletico last weekend. With the league leaders dropping points, allowing Barcelona to take up the pace at the top of the table, Los Blancos couldn’t get past Real Betis on Sunday night.

It means Real have taken just two points from a possible nine on the road lately so they’ll be pleased to return to the Bernebeu this weekend. Under Zinedine Zidane, the Spanish giants have improved but having dropped 17 points already this season, there’s no more margin for error.

Madrid trail the top-two by four points and Barca have a game in hand on their rivals too. But while Real have been struggling to grind out the victories on their travels, they remain the ultimate flat-track bullies when hosting bottom-half clubs in La Liga.

Dating back to 2010/11, Los Blancos have returned astonishingly strong figures of W55-D2-L1 – a huge 36/58 (62%) of those triumphs were achieved by a margin of three goals or more. So the 1.75 on offer for Real to beat a -2.5 Asian Handicap against Espanyol looks just the ticket on Sunday.

The capital club boasts a fierce W13-D3-L0 head-to-head record with the visitors and have won their last five on home soil, scoring an average of 5.40 goals-per-game. The hosts have fired in the most shots across Europe this season too, averaging a whopping 19.90 per-game.

Espanyol arrive on the back of a W1-D3-L5 record and their seven successive away league losses is their worst run since 2002. Looking at their return from big-two trips since 2010/11, the Parakeets have lost on nine occasions, six of which were by a margin of three goals or more.