Bad Time for an International Break

I am not a big fan of an International Break. I love the World Cup, but the qualifying games that cause the stoppage of play for club football always seem to come at a bad time. They either slow down momentum or force a team to think about a bad performance for longer then it should. In this case, we are having to ponder a loss to the bottom club in La Liga, Sporting, while we prepare for our next game with the new bottom club, Betis, another team that is really better then its league position indicates.

After a good start to the season, Mallorca had a chance to move into European contention with a win at home against the bottom team. Instead we came out flat against Sporting Gijon, gave up an early goal in minute twelve, and then gave up a second in minute 49, which essentially ended the game. Webos missed penalty kick in minute 75 only added insult to a poorly played game at home and we lost 2-0 and gave Sporting their first three points of the year. You simply cannot lose at home to bottom level teams if you want to have a season worth mentioning. A loss like this takes away all the positive results that we had achieved up to this point. Now we are mid table, which certainly cant be scoffed at, but with our games against top level teams still to come, we need to get these wins to keep the spirit of the club high and the position in the table away from relegation.

Everyone from Manzano to Arango expressed their dismay with the loss. While they can complain about giving up an early goal and how not scoring first at home makes winning a tough task, they simply got beat by a team that played better. They get two weeks to think about it and will see Betis this weekend in another tricky game. Points on the surface should be expected, but Betis does not want to lose this game at home and does not want to lose sight of what will likely be the teams they will be looking at to stay above in the relegation dogfight they seem to be facing.

The team still faces the problems that come with so many new players. The talent shows one week which leads to exciting wins, but the following week the players cannot seem to connect and the flow of the game gets controlled by the other teams. Aduriz is going to have to start finding the back of the net more frequently and Manzano continues to hope Keita can help in that area. Webo is just too inconsistent to count on week to week, but many would argue he is our best striker.

Having to think about this loss for too long is going to be a problem for this team. They need regular football to get more familiar with each other and these breaks when confidence is down will show to be a problem in the next few matches.

With Betis coming up this weekend and now the 4th round of the Copa beginning shortly to bring us into the action(we get Malaga in this round-certainly a winnable matchup), we will see more games and maybe the players can use the extra time to work on some things that were clearly missing against Sporting. The matchup against Betis will not be easy but the character on this team will show itself if it exists this weekend. Otherwise we could see a string of results that will get the negativity back after such a positive start to the season.

Category: Mallorca Team News

Tags: Mallorca Team News

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