Real Racing Club de Santander vs Deportivo Alavés

There is no head-to-head here at all, and that absence is the fixture's defining feature rather than a footnote to it. Racing Santander are one of this summer's promoted clubs. They do not appear anywhere in last season's final table, our record of them begins on 16 August 2026, and there is no top-flight meeting with Alavés for us to look at. We are not going to reconstruct a second-tier campaign we cannot verify in order to fill the gap.

What that means in practice is that four matches are the entire body of evidence about how this Racing side handles this division. Four matches against a club with a full season behind it is a lopsided comparison, and every judgement below carries that asymmetry.

Alavés finished 2025/26 in fourteenth on 43 points, from eleven wins, ten draws and seventeen defeats, with 44 goals scored and 56 conceded for a goal difference of −12. That is a survival season rather than a comfortable one: a single point covered fourteenth place and eighteenth in the final table, and the profile was negative at both ends of the pitch. Nothing in it suggests a side that travels to a hostile ground and takes control of a match.

Three matches into the new season — and three is not form — Alavés have seven points and have conceded one goal in three matches. They beat Getafe 3-0 at home on 15 August, all three goals after a goalless first half, drew 1-1 away at Rayo Vallecano on 20 August, and beat Villarreal 1-0 at home on 28 August, ahead at the interval. Five scored, one conceded, unbeaten, fifth on the early table with a match in hand on the home side.

Racing have four points from four. They drew 2-2 with Villarreal at home on 16 August in a match that was already 2-2 at half-time, lost 1-0 at Getafe on 23 August, beat Elche 3-2 at home on 28 August after leading 3-0 at the break, and lost 3-2 at Rayo Vallecano on 5 September having been level at 2-2 at the interval. Seven scored, eight conceded, eleventh place. Their two home matches produced four points and nine goals; their two away trips produced nothing.

The first factor is the clash of shapes, and it is stark. Racing's four matches have produced fifteen goals between the two sides — four, one, five and five. Alavés's three have produced six: three, two and one. One of these clubs turns every fixture into a shootout and the other has been involved in nothing but tight games. Both samples are far too small to trust, and they cannot both survive contact with each other.

The second is that Racing have conceded in every match they have played at this level. That includes both home games, where they took four points anyway. A promoted side that scores enough to win 3-2 and concedes enough to lose 3-2 is a recognisable type, and it is a type that gives a disciplined visiting team chances.

Third, Alavés's away record is a single match. One 1-1 draw at Rayo is not a travelling profile, and last season's eleven wins across a whole campaign warn against reading their start as a step up in class. This is a mid-table club having a good three weeks, not a side that has been rebuilt into a contender.

Fourth, home advantage is real here but unmeasured. Racing have taken four of their four points at their own ground, in front of a crowd that had no top-flight football to watch there last season. Against that, the two opponents they faced there were Villarreal, who have two points from four matches, and Elche, who finished thirteenth last season. Neither result proves the home advantage will hold against a club that has conceded once all season.

Fifth, what a matchday-five fixture means to these two. Both will read this as a match against direct competition for a comfortable mid-table finish, which usually produces a cautious game — the opposite of what Racing's results so far suggest.

We take Double Chance X2 — draw or Deportivo Alavés at 1.48 with low confidence. Alavés are unbeaten, have conceded a single goal in three matches, and have a season of top-flight evidence behind them that the home side simply does not have. Backing them to avoid defeat rather than to win is the honest width of that opinion, because their away sample is one drawn match and their underlying season was a fourteenth-place one.

Low confidence is the point rather than a hedge. Two signals pull each way: the visitors' defensive numbers and their established status against Racing's four points from two home matches and a scoring rate nobody in this fixture can ignore. Our record on double chance sits at a 65% strike rate for a return of about minus three percent, so this is not a market we are picking because it has made money — it is the shape that matches an argument we hold loosely, priced in a band where we have been close to level.

The thing that beats it is straightforward. Racing have scored in three of four matches and turned their home ground into the sort of place where a 3-2 is normal. If this becomes that game, a club whose whole start has been built on conceding next to nothing is the wrong side to be holding.