For half an hour at the Estadio de la Cerámica, Villarreal looked like a team ready to shake off their miserable start. Then came the collapse. Real Betis, ruthless and clinical when it mattered, scored twice in the space of four minutes before the interval to overturn an early deficit and leave with a 2-1 victory that felt as decisive as any yet delivered this season.

Gerard Moreno had given the hosts the lead they craved, poking home from close range on 29 minutes to send a jolt of belief around the ground. But belief is a fragile currency for a side without a win, and Betis spent the rest of the half spending it. Cucho Hernández levelled, Natan turned the game, and the visitors climbed to third in the table while Villarreal sank deeper into the mire at 18th.

It was the sort of result that separates a team finding its stride from one still searching for the floor. Betis have now won four of their five matches; Villarreal, five games in, are still waiting for their first.

A promising start

The opening exchanges belonged to the home side, and when the breakthrough arrived it carried the stamp of a set-piece well worked. From a corner, Renato Veiga rose to nod the ball down, and Gerard Moreno was there in the heart of the six-yard box to lash a left-footed finish into the centre of the goal. The Cerámica roared as one, the frustration of two draws and three defeats momentarily lifting.

For ten minutes or so the plan held. Villarreal had their lead, a platform, and the crowd behind them. Gerard Moreno's finish was the product of the kind of aggression and precision from a corner that a struggling side dreams of, and for a spell it seemed the afternoon might finally bend in their favour.

But a two-point team learns quickly that a single goal buys little breathing room against opponents with momentum. Betis absorbed the early pressure, steadied, and began to probe. The warning signs were there before the equaliser landed, and Villarreal did not heed them.

The four-minute swing

On 39 minutes, the game turned. Cucho Hernández, sharp and alert inside the box, drove a left-footed shot from very close range straight through the middle to draw Betis level. It was the strike of a forward in form, unfussy and lethal, and it drained the noise from the stands in an instant.

Villarreal barely had time to reset. Four minutes later, from another corner, Natan struck the decisive blow, guiding a left-footed effort from the centre of the box into the bottom right corner. Two set-piece goals conceded, one equaliser born of a scramble Villarreal could not clear — the hosts had unravelled at precisely the moment they needed composure most.

There is a cruelty in the timing. To lead, to be pegged back, and then to fall behind before the whistle for the interval is to trudge off with the game already slipping away. Whatever was said in the dressing room, the second half offered no reply of note. Betis had the lead, and Betis knew exactly how to keep it.

Betis on the rise

This was a statement of intent from the visitors. Twelve points from five matches, third in the table, and a defence that has now conceded just six goals all season — Betis carry the look of a side that intends to stay near the summit. Cucho Hernández and Natan supplied the goals, but the win was built on the calm certainty of a team that trusts itself to win the moments that decide matches.

Their only defeat of the campaign now feels like an outlier. Four wins, no draws, and a clarity of purpose that Villarreal could only envy. On the road, in a stadium where the home crowd had been primed for a turning point, Betis simply refused to blink. The manner of the comeback — swift, surgical, and from two set-pieces — spoke of a group whose confidence is real and growing.

With seven goals scored and six conceded, Betis are not a swashbuckling side so much as a relentless one. They take their chances, they defend their box, and they leave with the three points. On this evidence, third place is no accident.

Villarreal in trouble

For Villarreal, the numbers make grim reading. Two points from five games, 18th in the table, and a goal difference of minus three that tells the story of a season already in danger of drifting. Ten goals conceded is the mark of a defence that cannot protect a lead, and this was the third time the evidence has been laid bare in front of their own supporters.

Gerard Moreno's goal deserved to be a foundation, not a footnote. Instead it became the prelude to another afternoon of self-inflicted damage, two corners conceded and two goals shipped from them. A team fighting to escape the bottom of the table cannot afford to defend set-pieces like that, and the margin between the two sides on the night was written entirely in those two Betis moments.

The pressure now builds. Five games without a win is a run that turns whispers into questions, and the fixtures will not wait for Villarreal to find their feet. They have shown they can score; what they must find, urgently, is the resilience to hold what they have. Until they do, results like this one will keep them anchored to the foot of La Liga, watching sides like Betis stride away above them.