Freefall continues

Dark clouds in Barcelona? Sure, I think the whole city has a dark cloud over Park Guell. At least our neighbors down the street are in the semis of the Champions League, right? No parties in the Olympic village tonight. Espanyol have gone another 90 minutes without a goal making it 439 minutes now without airing out the net.

Riera started the match again on the bench, undoubtedly for his outburst this week and the club are now resigned to losing him as well in the summer. Garcia and Tamudo started but when you have 7 shots on goal in the whole game, then it’s not one player or even the sum of their senior players but a general lack of interest on the whole. The goal itself showed that. Idriss (I can’t call him Carlos anymore) Kameni is already thinking of cold winters in England, as the keeper dove for the cross, mishandled it on the ground, and set up Astudillo perfectly for the Osasuna goal at close range. It was a complete lack of concentration, he’ll be a perfect replacement for the equally incompetent Paul Robinson at Spurs.

Osasuna played the physical game they excel at, and despite not dominating possession they had what I think are the keys to winning matches. If you want to gauge if a club is keyed in, check their offsides, their fouls and yes I’m sorry to say their yellow cards. They battled and we didn’t. Osasuna were hitting us on the counter attack and on the wings, they were getting past our defenders pretty easily and they were bullying our midfield which seems to be the plan against us most weeks. We on the other hand were without confidence, playing route 1 football, looking for that speculative goal early on, we have a horrid record as it is when the opposition scores first, but I think tactically Valverde got it wrong.

The Czech midfielder Jaroslav Plasil had a nice game for Osasuna, he hit the woodwork and then also had a nice little run in the box early on. Juanfran hit the bar in the second half after getting past Kameni. Espanyol fall again and it was deserved. With just three shots on target, one each by Valdo, Coro and Tamudo, not even the best clubs will score with those odds.

The unfortunate results leave us now having dipped below promoted side Almeria on goal differential. So we’re now eighth with 6 to play, but of the clubs closest to us: Getafe drew, Betis(yay!) and Bilbao both lost, as did Mallorca with only Depor looking llike world beaters against the over matched vascos. You can pretty much kiss Europe goodbye for us. I’d just like to see us stay in the top half of the table now. Look for the heat to get intense wuickly on Quique Sanchez…whoops Ernesto Valverde.

Category: Espanyol Team News

Tags: Espanyol Team News

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