Sevilla enter their match Sunday with a fantastic and, of late, familiar opportunity to continue their incredible rise up the table in recent weeks: from 12th place just four weeks ago, the team will begin the match in 8th with a chance to move even higher. 6th place Osasuna lost in fantastically lopsided fashion to Rayo today, and 5th place Levante hosts 7th place Atlético in the early game Sunday. The Osasuna loss plus basically any Levante-Atleti result and a Sevilla win would see los Nervionses move into European spots, a feat which seemed impossible (or possible, but entirely improbable) just a month ago. These are the benefits of the mediocrity of La Liga in 2012, I guess.
Of course, Sevilla didn’t get on this hot streak by talking about how great it’d be to win. No, they’re winning because this blog has been successfully engaging in reverse psychology with Fate herself. So, to our old friend Fate, I say we can’t possibly win this game. Behold:
- Bilbao is playing some very impressive soccer right now as they storm through the Europa, and hardly had to expend themselves at all at midweek to dispatch Schalke 04. They’ll be fresh and full of momentum.
- We’re visiting one of the more hostile stadia in Spain.
- Bielsa! Llorente! Iraola! OH MY!
- Perotti’s season of misery, injury, and rarely playing stepped up a notch with yesterday’s announcement that he’s going to have back surgery for a herniated disk, so he’s obviously out.
- What’s that you say? “No problem, Reyes has been great lately”? Well, to your optimism I say: STRAINED ADDUCTOR. Not playing tomorrow! Don’t even ask about Spahic (still out injured) or Baba (still inexplicably disappeared from the face of the earth). I’m not sure what these injuries will mean in terms of lineup, but if I had to guess I’d say the only dangerous creative players on the field at the start tomorrow will be Negredo, Navas, and Manu.
So…yeah. All doomsaying aside, this is a legitimately difficult match. The last three games (Racing, Granada, Mallorca) were all games we SHOULD have won, and were particularly delightful simply because we have so often fallen apart against lesser opposition this year. Sunday’s match AT Bilbao is an entirely different beast (a lion, for example). Athletic have (in my opinion) a world-class coach, several world-class players, and are a team on the rise whose position in the table (12) is more an indication of how badly they need this game than their quality this year. I would obviously be ecstatic to see our recent run of wins continue, but would realistically be totally content with a tie, and certainly won’t be covering my head in ashes if we lose.
WHICH WE DEFINITELY WILL, RIGHT GUYS?!?
1-2 loss. no doubt. this is our second hardest remaining game on the schedule (mierda being the first).
SUCKS about perotti and horrible synchronization with reyes. whatever happened to campana by the way? remember when we were excited about him?
you forgot to add that valencia play away at madrid. which means that were they to lose, and were we to seize the opportunity and win (which we wont), we’d be within 3 of CL spots… which, at this point, is still just getting greedy. game at a time.
will rakitic start? or trocho? maybe manu plays out wide and baba gets a chance to participate with the full team?!?!!? doubt it.
Not to pile on, and not that he necessarily would’ve played today anyway, but Campana…is also injured.
I think Rakitic has to start. His disappearance is one of this season’s worst stories.
I think Trocho is out with 5 yellows.
At the moment I’m quite angry with Sevilla-I go to India for 2 weeks and I somehow manage to miss our best streak of the season and Manu (MANU!) has scored 5 (5!) goals in the last three matches. So I will be pretty angry if we don’t win today (which we won’t, obviously).
Kone is really on fire this season. Why could the team not get the best out of him? Was our midfield that poor,or was he not getting enough playing time?
yeah…. was just thinking that when i saw he scored again today. why did it fail with us? he definitely had a lot of injuries, and he was behind fabiano and kanoute, but even still. oh well.
Starting 11: Palop; Luna, Fazio, Escudé, F. Navarro; Medel, Rakitic; Navas, Manu; Kanouté y Negredo
Surprised and very happy to see Kanoute get the start.
(side note: not going to be able to catch this one, unfortunately. hope you guys can cheer the team on to success!)
hmmm…. but this means that manu is out wide? isnt part of why he’s been doing better is because he’s been slotted just behind negredo? hopefully this doesnt disrupt him.
atletico lose and levante win. so a win today will put us in 6th place (europa!) and within 3 points of something better (CL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
6 mins in and we have completely dominated them- a couple of really decent scoring chances already.
overall we’ve started off really well. manu takes a long shot that leads to a rebound that negredo almost puts away (but is headed off the line). we look good. except for a couple moments of sloppiness in the back line. one by fazio most notably that couldve been a goal…
holy crap, and after some super sloppy and lax defending i have no idea how llorente didnt finish that. oh wait, yes i do. PALOP. great save to smother what could’ve been a tap in.
PALOP saves us as the ball goes across the face of goal to Llorente before he dives and takes it from his feet.
wow. this game is wide open. chances on both ends now… though ours are a bit better
kanoute gets a yellow for intentionally handling the ball on what wouldve been a very nice play. didnt seem yellow-worthy to me. it was mostly his chest. but he did touch it…
fernando navarro with a great tackle that might have saved a goal. man this game is wide open.
wow. how did they not score? they have a beautiful string of passing that leads to a shot off the crossbar…
our defense doesnt look great. im not sure how well luna is covering the players rushing down his flank. maybe they’re overloading him? im not sure. but most attacks seem to be from guys getting behind us on that side. that was a really really close call.
guess who got a yellow
Medel gets a yellow for an extremely reckless tackle from behind. Not quite sure what he’s so angry about. 40′
i think we should be content with 0-0 at the half. we started better, but we were on our heels for the last 25. medel picks up a yellow and then argues with the ref. really wish he wouldnt do that.
HT. Really good game. Our counterattacking approach is making me quite nervous though; I don’t like our chances if we can’t score soon
The side looks uncomposed. We need to start possesion from the back instead of these wasteful long goal kicks. Palop is great saving but terrible with decision making on goal kicks or back passes.
We need to get the midfielders more of the ball.
Navarro just stood up in our box n let an opponent take the ball of his feet.
I still don’t get how he plays so frequently with Luna so much better.
Is Cala that poor that Luna has to play rb?
shit. that was coming. why were two guys playing with the ball on the edge of the box with only one of ours pressuring? 0-1 goal llorente
Llorente goal. 47′
Damn!
Llorente scores from a corner as soon as the 2nd half recommenced.
On the bright side we have enough time to turn it around.
I’m thinking now might be a good time to give that Baba guy some game-time…
It was a cross not a corner.
We have the players to turn this around. They need to believe it.
Baba for Kanoute 67′
Guarente for Raki. Has he actually played for us this season?
After a quick check, I can tell you the answer is no.
Guarente hits a really good free kick but Iraizoz catches it.
Guarente with another great free kick. Sure is trying to earn more PT
Palop really embarrassing with his time wasting antics.
FT. 1-0 No CL for us next year.
wow. we looked bad this half.
definitely didnt deserve it.
yeah that was a really pathetic second half. Rak doesn’t seem like the same player as last year at all. The old man played well until he got a knock. Navas was good, but didn’t have the same chemistry with Luna.
I would have liked to seen Luna play LM allowing Manu to play that CF role. All his goals have come from playing that position if I’m not mistaken.
though i am not rooting “for” real madrid. seeing them rack up goals against patetico (with whom we are competing for european spots) is very satisfying. PARTICULARLY given atletico’s position as stalwart defender of unfair TV rights along with valencia (and the EE obviously).