Deportivo Alavés reached its match against Valencia with a chance to do something it has not done in 25 years: win four straight home league games. The club beat Getafe, Villarreal and Osasuna in its first three home matches, so a victory at Mendizorroza would push that run to four and put a rare early-season marker on the board.
That is why the fixture is drawing attention now. Alavés had ended the fifth matchday in Champions League places, a position built in part on the nine goals it has scored at home this season, even if Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Racing at El Sardinero pulled it back into focus. Valencia arrives in the opposite shape, with just one goal scored in five league matches and ten conceded, which helps explain why this meeting feels less like a routine league date and more like a test of whether Alavés can turn a sharp home start into something lasting.
The benchmark is a real one. Alavés last won more than three consecutive home matches in the 2001-2002 season, when Mané’s side won six of its first eight home games at the Paseo de Cervantes stadium, then stitched together four straight home victories between matchdays 10 and 15 against Las Palmas, Espanyol, Celta and Barcelona in what became the club’s best sustained run of that era. That team finished seventh with 54 points, with 17 league wins and ten of them coming at home, and it conceded only one goal across those four home wins.
There is also a catch. Quique Sánchez Flores did not leave the Racing match talking about control or momentum. He called it “a sum of small details,” said the team was “far from playing a complete match,” warned that such lapses leave a side “very exposed,” and added that “we made errors in many aspects and that kept me away from victory.” That is the contradiction in Alavés’s position: a perfect home record so far, but a midweek reminder that the margin can disappear quickly when the performance slips away from Mendizorroza.
The result against Valencia will decide whether Alavés turns a fast home start into a milestone or stays one game short of matching a 25-year-old benchmark. The club’s record for consecutive home wins in Primera still belongs to 1998-1999, so four against Valencia would not rewrite that history, but it would show that this season’s strength at Mendizorroza is real enough to be measured against the best stretch it has produced in a generation.
