Deportivo la Coruña v Espanyol

Armando — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:27 +0000

Picture an historic club in Spain, with royal patronage for what its worth, and focus on their talismanic striker, a club legend named Raul who despite his advancing age is still a leader on the pitch as well as off it. He spends his entire career at the club after debuting as a raw rookie and leads the club to honors and trophies. The skills begin to deteriorate and the goal scoring starts to ebb, consistency being one of the first to go, and the whispers come first amongst his teammates and then in the press who are slow to judge as the local papers have a great deal of history with Raul. He becomes more introspective with his teammates and divisions arise in the locker room. Vocal challenges start appearing, by unnamed sources in the back-room staff as they are usually referred to in the papers, and transfer requests by influential players start turning up. Transfers into the club start to become more difficult as well; jaws wagging that their striker has far too much influence in the silly season. The sports dailies have pretty much played this scenario out at Real Madrid with Raul Gonzalez, but is the same scenario occurring at RCD Espanyol?

How do you tell Tamudo that his time might be approaching? He has a dismal scoring record this year 2 goals in 10 games with 2 missed penalties recently. With a scoring rate on average of 1 goal every 129 minutes the club itself is reeling, and only Valladolid, Huelva and Osasuna are worse on that scale. This week against Depor, a club with very similar outlook and very similar deficiencies, I expected a goalless draw with both clubs eking out a point but never imagined that the Andres Guardado would find his goal scoring form in Spain against us. Great goal I might add from a difficult angle and left footed wingers are cool to watch when they score. Still, itś time to start thinking as I said a few weeks ago about investing in a creative midfielder to support and learn from Ivan de la Peña and might I add finding someone to spell both Luis Garcia and Tamudo up front? Someone who could take penalties, too. Please? And make it snappy because weŕe falling down the table again…

Espanyol, drilling for gold?

Armando — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:18:00 +0000

Are Espanyol drilling for gold right now? Not likely as he’s due at the Montjuic for the summer, but striker Dario Cvitanich, the Argentinian-Croatian who plays for Banfield, “El Taladro (or The Drill), is on the Espanyol radar. Some reports have Paco Herrera already having signed him for some help up front, I guess it means he’s ignoring the black hole we have in the back, and as usual the player and both clubs have denied any deal. Rather than do the legwork myself on this story I went with someone who has actually seen him play. I asked Tim Vickery of the BBC World Service about Cvitanich.

” (He’s) just coming up 24, with around 25 goals in 80ish league games. Interesting striker and worth a look. No Olympic sprinter, but quick enough, can combine outside the area and finish first time in it. Have to say, though, that the standard there in Argentina is not great. He’ll find it a step up. Argentine football has plenty of strikers who couldn’t quite make the grade in Europe.”

Big thanks to Tim for coming through. Let’s see who I can get to chime in next week. What do I think on Cvitanich though? I think if he were 17 and not 24, then maybe he’d be able to grow into the standard of play in Spain, but this is a guy that may be another in a long line of forwards that stayed a little long in South America before leaving for Europe. Depor are also in for him as are of course Boca Juniors who are set to lose Rodrigo Palacio to Chelsea if you believe the rumors. He says he’d rather go to Europe, Banfield would rather do that deal than let him sign for los xeneises. In the end, I think Espanyol would be better served to look to Eastern Europe or Africa for bargain-basement help in the summer.

RCD Espanyol de Barcelona » player

Deportivo la Coruña v Espanyol

Espanyol, drilling for gold?