FC Barcelona 1-2 RCD Espanyol
By: Armando |
4 Comments
Sometimes in football, like in this match, the most incomprehensible things occur; the littlest player on the field (Ivan de la Pena) comes through with an unlikely header, unmarked and unchallenged, and then he adds to the tally with a monumental gift by Victor Valdez chipping it over the keeper after receving a wayward clearance from the same character. Bottom beats top, left is right, and suddenly we’re back into the mix, an escape from relegation a certainty?
Now, people on the other side of town (mostly cules) are going to downplay the loss, blame the ref or a subpar performance before a Champions League match midweek against Lyon looming. Xavi himself said that the ref took over the game, listened to the protestations of the Espanyol players, pulling out the red card, and awarded the “pessimism” of Espanyol to get in the way of the beautiful football that they were “dominating” with. What a load of rubbish.
They have no inherant right to beat all comers just because they can play neat pretty triangles on the pitch. Sometimes they need to fight. It was a chippy game from the get-go, a true derby match (emotional and heated) and Barca were giving just as much as they were getting. The cards were even throughout on the field (6 apiece) with one weird yellow going to the Barcelona bench for dissent. The red card didn’t look all that bad at first glance, but in slow motion you could see studs up in the lead foot for Keita and the trailing foot hitting the Espanyol player. There’ll be complaints, but it was a fair call, especially considering we lost a similar call in the corresponding fixture at the beginning of the year at the Montjuic; a game that threw us into a death spiral and humiliated us in front of the league. Karma. ‘Nuff Said.
I said we’d be lucky to get 3 points out of the matches against Sevilla, Barca, Real Madrid and Villareal, anything else in the next two is gravy I think.
Category: Espanyol Team News
The Lunatics have taken over the asylum
By: Armando | 10 Comments
- The responsibility is on the players, because it does not seem to interest them that there is a trainer. Miguel Angel Lotina or Ernesto Valverde blanquiazul had conflicts with the players. It can’t be that Mane lasted six matches, Márquez eight and now the players come out saying that the present trainer is the best one. It is necessary to be more serious than that and to mark a line. I am an españolista and I do not want to see the day that Espanyol gets relegated to the Segunda, but hope that this is the last season in which the players rule.”
Category: Espanyol Team NewsPaco Herrera resigns
By: Armando | 2 Comments
So, Paco Herrera can’t continue living off the glory of helping Rafa Benitez win the Champions League trophy anymore. Instead he leaves the club he joined from Liverpool with a bunch of failed negotiations and an inability to close the deal when any deal would have helped the cause.
Sure he was faced with an unbalanced lineup, the result of selling key players in the Summer, and yes with the arrival of a new coach in Pochettino he was faced with changing his transfer policy on the fly, from bringing in a defensive midfielder to shore up the defense under former coach Mane to bringing in help for their puny strike force, but in the end many of the deals he proposed vanished as quickly as they became known. Mateja Kezman was looking for another club in Europe and he would have been a decent short term replacement for Tamudo. Never materialized. Hernan Crespo who we spent considerable time and energy trying to convince to come to Barcelona was never going to leave his beloved adopted country to come to Spain.
In the end, for the failure of the squad, and the failed experiment with hiring not only Mane but also Tintin Marquez at the beginning of the year after the squad imploded under Ernesto Valverde, someone up top had to pay and unfortunately it was Paco Herrera who had to pay.
A nice man with great principles is what his immediate supervisor described him as, in one of the Barcelona dailies, but if you read between the lines like I did, all that means is that he was never ruthless enough or forceful enough to close the deal.
I hope his successor does.
Category: Espanyol Team NewsEspanyol 1-1 Recreativo Huelva
By: Armando | Add Comments
You have got to be kidding me. I have tired of writing negative reviews of the club’s performance, and after the flatter-to-deceive manner in which they’ve been playing, in two hard fought Copa del Rey battle against the enemy down the road and in close but no cigar matches against Valladolid and Recreativo Huelva. Through that patch that has brought us down from our usual midtable form to this an utter freefall and there’s nothing keeping us from bottom anymore. We’re at the bottom; in a three way tie with Mallorca and Osasuna, the only other club in Spain with as few wins as us and today we draw against the only squad with as few goals overall as we do. I’m not at all confident in staying up anymore. This was supposed to be our easy patch before the buzzsaw hits; we have Getafe next week away, and then Sevilla, Barcelona again, Real Madrid and ending with Villareal. We end the year with winnable games but we will need reinforcements and soon.
Copa del Rey: RCD Espanyol 0-0 FC Barcelona
By: Armando | Add Comments
Now that’s more like it. Alright, I understand it was against an under-strength Barca side that was starting Bojan all by his widdle-self up front, grey haired Silvinho and Alex Hleb’s pale ineffectual ghost on the wing, but my god we were impressive. I mean, come on, 12 seconds in we’ve already gotten stuck-in at midfield, we’ve counter-attacked with pace on the left wing by Nene, and but for a clumsy first touch by Moises, Espanyol might have scored. They almost did on the subsequent corner as well but Pinto punched it just as it was swerving in towards goal. Luis Garcia was caught offside 3 minutes in which is a good sign as he’s our one dominant forward left and he needs to be on the defender’s shoulder trying to beat the offside trap. We harried them on the wings, Sanchez had a great game as did Jarque in the back, and wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles we showed heart and determination against a much better opponent?
More on Pochettino next time, but the appointment of a young coach with club credentials and a fiery disposition was just what the anti-relegation doctors ordered. If we can catch that energy and bottle it for the league this weekend, we might just celebrate an escape from Montjuic and La Segunda at the same time at the Nou Sarria.
Category: Espanyol Team NewsThe Return of RCD Espanyol
By: Armando | 3 Comments
Well, as you’ve pretty much noticed it’s been pretty barren here at the RCD Espanyol Blog and I really want to apologize to my one lone reader. As many of you know, Espanyol have been plummeting down the table, a table filled with teams far less talented or even historic than ours. We have seen 3 coaches in the span of half a season, the loss of many of most talented players, and for a few moments on Sunday I wished I had not begun to follow such a sorry bunch as those that put on the red and white away kit that we wore as we faced Malaga, a side that looked so much like the exciting side we were last year: blue and white striped kit, pure passing football, it was a sobering reminder of what could have been this year.
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Category: Espanyol Team NewsEspanyol in transition
By: Armando | 1 Comment
If it seems that life at the Montjuic is about to get more interesting, then it isn’t just appearances. It is about to get very interesting at the Montjuic and it isn’t just about the latest announcement that club president Dani Sanchez-LLibre revealed that the club would be moving to the new stadium in March of next year. No, last week signaled a seismic shift at the club with the appointment of Joan Collet as Vice-President in charge of expansion and marketing under Sanchez-Llibre and the return of former club official Germán De la Cruz who, after 4 years away from club, has taken over all sporting side operations. What does this mean for the club?
Clearly, Collet who has long been rumored as the successor for Club President, will have a say as to the future economic direction of the club and may yet take over for Sanchez-Llibre, who has said in the past that he may not finish his 5 year term in 2011. De la Cruz’s direction is even more interesting. He is returning to the club after being forced out during the last elections in 2006 and will help Sanchez-Llibre with the day to day running of the club in La Liga. His first action in charge was to have a meal with close friend Tintin Marquez at a local restaurant and not to meet with sporting director Paco Herrera who would join the club oddly at Racing Santander whereas he is usually scouting other matches away from the club. While the newspapers are already mounting Tintin’s head on a virtual pike, I would say that Paco has more to lose with the club changing it’s leadership.
Rightly or wrongly, the club are in for a very interesting winter break.
Two Weeks of Misery
By: Armando | Add Comments
I’ve been incommunicado for a few weeks, the day job is pinching my time as such, but if you’d like I’d say that there wasn’t much to write about actually then you’d be wrong. It’s been a disappointing few weeks at the Montjuic, with a 3-4 away loss to lowly Numancia that we should have put away but for two goals in the last 6 minutes or so, the deciding goal a howler let in by Kameni (again: it seems when the contract talks come in so do opponents’ goals), and the recent 3-0 drubbing by Racing Santander in which we leaked goals, a site I had grown accustomed not seeing this year. My god, Munitis scored a goal against us!
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Deportivo la Coruña v Espanyol
By: Armando | Add Comments
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?
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Espanyol 1 v Osasuna 0
By: Armando | Add Comments
This is more like it. I know that we were facing bottom feeder Osasuna and Camacho big sweaty armpits but it’s a great day when you play your game and your captain scores a beautiful striker’s goal. It was a typical Raul Tamudo strike; lunchbox in hand, a meat-and-potatoes goal where he was pinched between two defenders in the box and rushed by the Osasuna keeper and he pokes it through, feebly sure but no less a goal than a 35 yard wonder-strike. He missed another penalty earlier on, missing wide right, but that’s becoming a habit of his that I’m not sure is going to break this late in his career (maybe time to think about another penalty taker perhaps?)
Quick Hits: Uno: It was nice to see the 3 points attached to the score sheet, especially since we turned an assured 1-2 win to the gallegos at segunda division Celta Vigo into a 2 all draw midweek in the Copa del Rey. Dos: On the injury front- defenders Steve Finnan and Javi Chica are due to be back from niggling injuries but the Osasuna match gave us another shattering blow to Ivan de la Pena health. This time it looks like he’s broken his left fibula which means a few weeks in a cast and some more weeks of rehab afterwards. The papers say 4 to 5 weeks but that’s still up in the air. We’d better start thinking soon about getting someone as his apprentice because his shelf-life is getting to be pretty short. The name Diego Buonanotte from River Plate of Argentina has been mentioned but he’s probably looking at Italy.
Category: Espanyol Team News
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