Villarreal and Espanyol hung on to the coat-tails of the leaders in Spanish La Liga on 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 it 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 its 3-0 victory at Osasuna on Saturday, while Real Madrid stayed second with 35 following its 2-0 victory at home to Valencia.

Neat passing

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 its 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.

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.