Athletic Bilbao-Mallorca
By: Jeremy | April 3rd, 2009As we hit the road to face a team with similar up and down qualities, we wonder if the international break has taken away the momentum that was established by the victory against Atletico. We will find out this weekend.
After the Atletico win, we moved up the table over a lot of clubs including this weekends opponent. We sit at 32 points while Athletic sits at 31. While we may seem to be a mid table table, in fact we are still just three points above the relegation zone. Thus we face the latest in a series of relegation six pointers that are must wins if we want to avoid needing results in the final four games against the big clubs.
This game also marks Adurizs return to Bilbao to face the home fans and the club he spent many years with before transferring to Mallorca. He will want to play a good game even more so then normal.
Mallorca continues to earn points each week and is on as good a form as any team in LaLiga. However with the closeness of the teams in the relegation fight, this is just another must win game. The team seems to face this every week but because of their poor first half form, they have themselves to blame and it is a testament to Manzano that the team did not quit when it could have for so many reasons.
With things falling into place for Mallorca, they have to feel they can win this game, even though its on the road. Arango and Jurado have been great and players like Castro have really improved of late and the team is in form.
Athetic is just the latest team who by the wackiness of the schedule gets to play Mallorca after playing the big four. They lost all those games and have not won since a Feb 1st 3-2 home win over Malaga. After that game, they seemed safe and ready to make a move upward. Instead, a couple of ill timed draws and defeats followed by these four losses, have pushed them to the brink of the relegation zone. With their history of never having been relegated while sticking with local Basque players an impressive achievement, it would be a shame to see them go down. But in todays modern football world, survival is getting tougher for this team and will continue to be so if it continues with its tradition. This is a team I will always respect and root for.
That being said, would you rather be at 31 points with the big four games behind you or at 32 points with momentum and the big four waiting to close out the year. That is a tough call but momentum is big in any sport. Bilbao is trying to put on the brakes to a bad run but they are likely the latest team to come off the big four games thinking they will have an easy match with Mallorca only to give away points. It likely continues this week.
Prediction
Bilbao 1-2 Mallorca
Category: Mallorca Team News
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