Fredi Kanouté recovered from his weekly injury in time to join the starting lineup. His 53rd minute goal made the difference today for a pretty actively offensive Sevilla in a 1-0 victory at home against Real Sociedad.
Applying the transitive property to recent results (tie at Villarreal, win vs. RSO), Sevilla is both worse and better than Barcelona. Sevillistas should be encouraged that (1) we sleep in 3rd place tonight, and (2) we seemed to dominate the match up to our potential by controlling the ball and working it around to find space and opportunities to exploit. Kanouté was his usual silky-gliding self, pushing the ball into space for Navas or Negredo to move up. Negredo was active as always, with only a couple of heavy touches keeping him off the scoreboard. Coke is looking like a solid, competent defensive ying to Cáceres’s more aggressive yang. Medel put out his regular share of fires and counters.
I think not having a player who stands head and shoulders above the rest is a bit of Marcelino’s coaching philosophy shining through: defend and attack with eleven. The back line was cohesive enough, and the transition to attack looked mostly fluid.
We visit an Osasuna side next week that suffered the worst loss of any La Liga team this season: an 0-8 bore in the Camp Nou. Every other match ended 1-0 today. Cool scoreline, bro.
Nice three points, Sevilla.
very good result, and i agree with jeremy’s final comment in the game thread. it actually was some pretty decent football. we need to do better on set pieces (8 corners with nothing to show for it). i agree that coke looked quite good back there. we had a couple moments where a better team might have punished us, but on the whole we defended reasonably well.
perotti was really off today. his set pieces are terrible. cant anyone else take a corner from the left side? the ones i saw were wasted.
the goal was very nicely done. the flick from medel and then the long pass/header from negredo to kanoute and a poised, simple (but probably harder than it looked) finish was great. we also had a few shots JUST missing. if another one or two had gone in, it would’ve reflected the flow of the game a bit more. but honestly, who cares? three points. and yes, we sleep in third. nice.
getting points from malaga, sociedad, and villareal in our first three matches is something to be pleased with.
lets obliterate osasuna, cus then we’ve got a few tough ones. we might benefit from playing valencia at home just 3 days after they host barca… but beat osasuna first, or it doesnt matter.
I guess we’re going to be watching this all fall?
Gio on for Tottenham at 84′ up 3-0. That’s late enough (and ahead enough) that it probably doesn’t mean anything about their plans for him.
Kone starting for Levante, who (knock on wood) are tied with RM at half and up a man… i gonna say that RM only wins 3-0 instead of the 8-0 they would’ve tried to put up to match Barca.
By the way, this “Falcao” guy looks like he might be, uh, pretty good. Those who wrote of Atleti might need to reconsider at some point.
KoneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE
WOW. and they beat RM 1-0 on a goal by Kone. i think we should get a point in the standings for that.
Feels nice with 7 points from the first 3 matches. 3 good rivals. The match wasn’t the best to watch but as Jeremy pointed out – we did play some decent football. The defense looks good – yet i do still believe we need to improve on our efficiency upfront; to many chances going to waste.
But the team is new.. well kind of, will take time until Marcelino’s ideas will have been fully implemented. And as we’re winning points in a ”ugly” fashion, this is good as it will only increase the players confidence. Good times.
Anyone here happy that we got Marcelino instead of Bielsa? Not looking bright for Loco Bielsa..
It really is great that we’ve emerged from these 3 matches undefeated, with 7 points. When you think about it, we’ve just played the three basic Liga matches: one against a top, CL team (Villarreal), one “special” match against a hated rival who also just happens to be a new, rising threat in La Liga (Malaga), and one against a good enough team that we nonetheless absolutely “should” beat (Sociedad).
Given our tendency to struggle with especially that last category of opponent, the “ground out” nature of the 1-0 over RSO is especially encouraging–in the past those matches have been the ones in which we either play well and can’t score, or look like crap and can’t manage a result.
If this start to the season is any indication, I think I’m going to like Marcelino’s Sevilla just fine.