Next to go?

In a recent press conference Del Nido has reiterated (as he has before) that Sevilla is a selling club.  And alluded to the likelihood that we will continue to be a selling club regardless of whether we qualify for European competition or not.

My question then is this: Who do we think will be the next player Sevilla sells?  I don’t mean, who will be the next to leave because they haven’t performed to standard.  I mean a guy who has played well and will be sold for the sake of preserving this team’s fiscal viability.

Possible candidates:

1. Navas
2. Perotti
3. Rakitic
4. Cicinho
5. Negredo
6. Navarro
7. Medel

Others? And a bonus question, how much do you think they will go for?

Scary to think about, but its the reality of being a Sevilla supporter.  Put your answers in the comments.  Cheers.

Jubilation!!! (Suck it Ronaldo)

Awesomeness!

Also, Zonal Marking featured our game.  And, as always, they do an awesome job, here.

Here is the overview, but you should DEFINITELY read their post.

Real were undeniably sloppy at the basics tonight, and not all of that can be attributed to Sevilla’s approach. Their simple short passes under no pressure were wayward, while their marking at set-pieces was bizarrely slack for a Mourinho side. It was also interesting how obviously affected they were by Sevilla’s physicality, with both Higuain and Di Maria (probably Real’s worst two players) lashing out.

That shouldn’t take anything away from Sevilla’s display, though: their initial strategy – (a) pressing heavily, (b) marking Alonso and (c) using an extra holding midfielder – meant they stifled Real’s passing throughout the first half, and although Mourinho could call upon three fantastic attacking options from the bench, Michel was able to respond.

Michel set up intelligently and reacted alertly, and deserves a great amount of credit tonight.

Great great game from our boys.  Letting in just two goals in four games is pretty impressive.  Only scoring four leave some room for improvement.

Tidbits – Euro and other news

Pretty good match between two of Europe’s biggest.  Navas came on in the 65th minute and on the whole was very active and involved.  Aside from one or two crosses which could have been more precise, I thought he had a nice came, causing more trouble down the right side than David Silva had managed before getting replaced.

Also, Fabregas started and played pretty well, finishing Spain’s only goal.  But later in the match, Negredo was snubbed and instead Torres came on for some offensive spark.  Torres was HORRIFIC.  He blew about three good chances (one of them a one on one with Buffon fed in by our very own Jesus Navas).  He also managed to pick up a yellow in his limited minutes.  I’m hoping that this means that Negredo will now be ahead of him in the queue.  Depending on tactics I think there is a good chance that we see Negredo starting on Thursday against Ireland.

Right now, I’m half watching Rakitic and Croatia play Ireland.

And finally, in a small piece of financial news, apparently, because he played a whopping total of 9 minutes for Arsenal this season and Arsenal qualified for the Champions League.  Squillaci earned us a gift of 250,000 Euros.  So that’s nice.

Anyway, go Sevillistas!

Oh, and in bad news, I guess Medel got in trouble with the Chilean team and has gotten kicked off the team (am I understanding that correctly?  Could someone with better Spanish clarify that?) after he was caught out late clubbing…  That sucks.  He’s never been a trouble-maker with us…

Maduro

El Desmarque reports that we signed Hedwiges Maduro for three years. I think he was injured last year as he only played a handful of games for Valencia. He’s 6’1″ central defender. I guess he was called in to the Dutch preliminary Euro 2012 team but didn’t make the final cut. transfermarkt values him at 2.5-3 million euros. But no report of what we’re paying.

Anyone know much more?

This seems like a solid signing… But hard to say I guess. Still no news on Spahic? What does this mean for Fazio?

The Last Bastion of Optimism

OK guys.  This season has been….  rough.  Jeremy served up the sobering reminder of who we are as Sevilla fans and what expectations are reasonable.  And then, with some help from the officiating, Real Madrid helped to reinforce that reminder.

And yet, this week actually went better than we could have possibly expected.  We never realistically could have expected more than a loss away at RM.  And yet every team above us with whom we are competing for a Europa spot, dropped points.  Forget about Levante, Malaga, and Valencia.  What we need is to finish in the top 7 (or ideally 6).

To finish seventh, we have to pass two of the following 3 teams: Bilbao, Atletico, or Osasuna.  That is still very possible.

Look at the remaining games for each team (home games in caps):

• Atletico (49 pts): SOCIEDAD, MALAGA, Villareal
• Bilbao (48 pts): REAL MADRID, GETAFE, Levante
• Osasuna (48 pts): Valencia, SOCIEDAD, Santander
• Sevilla (46 pts): BETIS, RAYO, Espanyol

Of all these teams, we probably have the easiest schedule.  Additionally, Bilbao and Atletico are playing each other in the Europa final AND Bilbao is in the Copa del Rey final.

I’m also curious on what happens if Atletico wins Europa, but Bilbao wins CdR.  Does anyone know exactly how all these scenarios could play out?  Is it possible to finish 8th and get a Europa spot?

Anyway, the bottom line is that the critical week is actually next weekend while Osasuna goes up against Valencia who are fighting hard for 3rd, and Bilbao host Real Madrid who have nothing else left to focus on (hahaha).  If they both lose and we win, then we’d at least be in 7th.

This season isn’t over yet.  We still have a LOT to play for and I truly believe that we could still pull this off.

Put your guesses for the top 9 spots in the comments.

Keep the faith.  Vamos mi Sevilla!

AVB Anyone?

At other times we’ve talked about how frustrated we are with the mid/lower tier trainers we have.  Obviously Michel has seemingly turned the team around a bit since he took over.

But…  Would any of you be enticed by trying to get Andre Villas-Boas?  Not that I heard this as a rumor ANYWHERE.  But its an interesting thought.  His stock is pretty low right now after he was seen as the second coming of Mourinho before arriving at Chelsea.

Just food for thought.

Valencia – Sevilla

This match is not particularly important.

 

 

 

if we somehow, miraculously, took all 3. that’d be awesome.

away at Valencia is obviously going to be one of the hardest games of the season. maybe we can use it as motivation to get our first back to back wins since 1983. or whenever it was.

somehow, in this insane season, that would actually put us within 2 of Europa and within 4 of CL.

of course, the loss would leave us just 5 out of relegation…

Tidbits: Varas, Negredo, Rumors

Been a while.  As a non-European, I REALLY have a tough time caring at all about international break.

But thought I’d throw this up as a place holder:

1) Negredo extended!  (did we ever even discuss that?)

2) Varas extended!

3) Negredo slow to recover from injury (subtext: why don’t we have a GD backup!?!?!)

4) Stupid rumors about other people we may be interested in: Morata… Gio, obviously…

5) Perotti is interested in becoming Spanish since Argentina is inexplicably snubbing him.

6) FINALLY a game this weekend!!!  We need to win this one.  Its one of those “here is how you blow it” type of games.  And can’t take it for granted.

7) Our defense has let in the least goals of anyone in La Liga.

Discuss.  Back to studying for me.

WTF?

seriously? our last minute moves were unloading Romaric to Espanyol for 1.5 or so million and loaning out Bernardo.

really? are they banking on Rakitic providing cover for Kanoute?  let me just say that if anything at all happens to Negredo we are in VERY serious trouble.

fine, maybe you felt that a big name like Ruiz, dos Santos, or Dempsey was out of our price range, but was there really no one who we could bring in for around 2-3 million to provide some cover and prevent a worst case scenario of starting a del Moral/Rakitic front line?

suddenly it feels hard for me to feel very confident that ownership is intent on winning let alone getting back in the CL instead of covering its losses in the very short run.  i’ll bet right now (and would love to lose this bet) that at some point before the january transfer window, this move WILL cost us points in the standings…

how can we possibly unload all of our strikers without the commitment of making sure we have someone lined up for cover?  count me as pissed off.

Dempsey?

OK.  This rumor is obviously not going to happen.  I’d put the odds at roughly 0.0000045%.

But this is an English language Sevilla blog where many of us are from the US, and to me, this is the best rumor I could imagine.  Not necessarily on a footballing level (though I think that Dempsey is a very good player) but just on a personal level.  I (admittedly) used to follow the New England Revolution and Dempsey is my favorite USMNT player.  So this would be my favorite player coming to play for my favorite team.

Could Dempsey help this team?  Yes.  He’s not a pure 9.  But he’s a good withdrawn forward who can create for himself and for others. And he can play up top, out wide, or in the middle.  He causes defenses headaches with his speed and dribbling.  He isn’t the physical presence of Negredo or Kanoute by any means, but he’s crafty and he gets on the end of all kinds of balls he has no business getting to.   Honestly though, its tough to assess him.  I think his passing, game awareness, and overall skill level could make him a great mach for La Liga and Sevilla, though I’ve mostly seen him play against CONCACAF opposition so its a bit hard to judge.  He has been consistently one of Fulham’s best players the last few years and was their leading scorer in ’10-’11.

This post really has no point.  He’s not coming here.  But seeing these rumors suddenly emerge made my heart skip a beat.  He’s valued at something like 9 million Euros…  We’ll see.  I’d be thrilled, but not necessarily for the right reasons.

Any less biased heads have an assessment?

PS. Those black/red Fulham jerseys are sweet.

PPS. Gio rumors are back a bit.  They won’t die.  But honestly, at this point, having crashed out of Europa, I’m not convinced we’re getting anyone else.