Elche CF 0-1 Valencia CF: Primera Division Match Report, 1 November 2026

In April, Elche beat Valencia 1-0 at the Martínez Valero after a goalless first half. Nearly seven months on, the same ground produced the same pattern with the names reversed. Elche CF 0-1 Valencia CF was 0-0 at the interval, and the only goal of the match went to the side that had started the day nineteenth.

It was Valencia's second league win of the season, and it looked exactly like the first, 1-0 away from home at Deportivo Alavés in mid-September. They arrived on six points from ten games — one win, three draws, six defeats — with seven goals scored and seventeen conceded. Mestalla had been the worst of it: four defeats and two draws in six home matches, three goals scored there. Their previous outing was a 1-2 home defeat by Villarreal in which they had led at half-time.

Elche were sixteenth on ten points, and their record was lopsided. Away from home they had two wins, three draws and one defeat, including 3-0 at Rayo Vallecano the week before; at the Martínez Valero they had not won at all — one draw and three defeats, eleven goals conceded in four games. They also came in on three straight clean sheets: 0-0 with Celta, 0-0 at Villarreal and the win in Vallecas.

Goalless at the break was what both records suggested: a defence that had stopped conceding against an attack that had barely started. The second half broke it once, in Valencia's favour, and Elche did not find a reply.

No pick was published on this match; it was one of the games played while the site sat untouched, from the last Friday of October into the first of November. In the table, Valencia moved to nine points from eleven matches and cut their goal difference to minus nine. More useful than either figure is the distance to the club they beat: four points at kick-off, one now. It is far too early for that to decide anything, but nine points from eleven is a poor return for a side that finished ninth on forty-nine last season. That was close to 1.3 points a game; this season's rate is under one. Eight goals in eleven games is the figure that most needs to move.

Elche stay on ten points, with a goal difference of minus four, and take a fifth home game without a win: no wins, one draw and four defeats at the Martínez Valero, twelve goals conceded there. Nine of their ten points have come on the road. What this match settled is small: Elche's run of clean sheets ended at three, and the wait for a home win went on.