MADRID: Villarreal and Espanyol hung on to the coat-tails of the leaders in La Liga Sunday with home wins that owed much to their attempts to play attractive attacking football. Nilmar struck the only goal as Villarreal beat Sevilla 1-0 at the Madrigal, maintaining its unbeaten home record this season and putting it third with 30 points from 14 matches. Espanyol is two points behind them in fourth, after it survived the 52nd minute sending off of midfielder Raul Baena to win 1-0 against Sporting Gijon. Luis Garcia struck the winner in the 70th minute to maintain the Barcelona-based club's 100 percent record at Cornella-El Prat. Champion Barcelona is top with 37 points after their 3-0 victory at Osasuna Saturday, when Real Madrid stayed second with 35 following its 2-0 victory at home to Valencia. Villarreal's neat passing game carved open struggling Sevilla after 30 minutes, when Italy striker Giuseppe Rossi cut off the right flank and picked out Nilmar's diagonal run into the area. The Brazilian rounded Andres Palop to score. Sevilla had two goals ruled out and home keeper Diego Lopez made a fine late save from Fernando Navarro, but it was not enough and Gregorio Manzano's visitors slumped to their fourth consecutive defeat. In Barcelona, Espanyol's Baena was shown a harsh second yellow card after 52 minutes, but Mauricio Pochettino's side continued to boss the game. Its winner came when Pablo Osvaldo dinked a ball over the top for strike partner Garcia who raced through to score, and Sporting slipped into the bottom three. In other games, Getafe beat visiting Real Mallorca 3-0 and Manuel Pellegrini's Malaga returned to winning ways with a 4-1 hammering of Racing Santander. Eliseu's spectacular volley from a well-worked corner move set them on their way in the 28th minute, and Jose Rondon helped himself to a second-half brace. The battle between the bottom two sides, Almeria and Real Zaragoza, ended 1-1, which meant Javier Aguirre's Zaragoza continue to prop up the standings with nine points. Malaga downed Racing Santander 4-1 after a brace by Jose Rondon. Real Sociedad won the Basque derby against Athletic Bilbao 2-0. Barcelona shook off an improvised four-hour bus and train trip to beat Osasuna 3-0 Saturday, while Real Madrid downed Valencia 2-0. Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice for Madrid to give him 16 for the season, one ahead of Lionel Messi, who also notched a brace for Barcelona. Also, struggling Atletico Madrid had another disappointing performance in losing 2
