Cedric Bakambu brace puts Villarreal in control against Bayer Leverkusen

Cedric Bakambu scored in either half to give Villarreal a 2-0 victory over Bayer Leverkusen and leave them in charge of their Europa League last-16 tie.

The forward broke the deadlock four minutes in and doubled the Yellow Submarine's advantage nine minutes after the restart to ensure they secured a healthy lead ahead of the return leg in Germany in seven days' time.

And Leverkusen will be without Tin Jedvaj for that contest after he was dismissed for two yellow cards, the second coming in the penultimate minute of stoppage time for a deliberate handball.

The hosts came into this contest having lost at home to Las Palmas in the league at the weekend, their first defeat in 11 fixtures, but they attacked from the off in this contest and were soon rewarded.

Ex-Tottenham forward Roberto Soldado should have made the breakthrough with a double chance that came his way after great work by Mario Gaspar.

The full-back somehow squeezed his way between two players near the byline and pulled the ball back for Soldado, who mis-hit his first shot but saw the ball come back to him when Bernd Leno punched it in his direction, yet his second attempt was driven wide.

He quickly redeemed himself, though, collecting Kyriakos Papadopoulos' poor header out and hooking it over the top for Bakambu and he let the ball drop into his path before slotting it between Leno's legs.

Apart from a Javier Hernandez header straight at Alphonse Areola, Leverkusen did not threaten and Soldado had opportunities to make it 2-0 break the break, volleying one chance over and flicking another near-post attempt into Leno's body.

Villarreal would get a second goal early in the second half as Bakambu, who had not scored in 11 games before this contest, found the net again.

Leverkusen were slow getting back from a corner and were caught out when Denis Suarez won a challenge inside his own half, with the ball spinning through for the pacy Bakambu to pick up over halfway.

The 24-year-old raced through on goal and repeated his trick of firing through Leno's legs, although the goalkeeper will have been more disappointed to see this one go past him.

He did prevent it becoming 3-0 late on by pushing substitute Leo Baptistao's header over the crossbar, but was fortunate he was not caught out when flapping at the resulting corner.

Leverkusen then lost Jedvaj to a red card when he followed up a first caution for tripping Samu Castillejo with another booking for preventing an Adrian pass going through by foolishly moving his left arm in front of the ball.