Not Your Mothers Deportivo

Mallorca pulled out a 1-0 win at home against Deportivo on Saturday taking it 5 points from the final relegation spot. Maybe I blinked or something, but didnt Deportivo used to be a regular Champions League team, and a strong one at that, and now they seem to be a team with no offensive imagination who wants to play behind the ball, even against a mid table team like Mallorca? The end result? They are now fighting for their La Liga lives.

Mallorca has to be happy as typically they get outscored in high scoring matches or if the defense plays well, they dont finish their chances. The score should have been much better then 1-0. Mallorca missed so many chances, it was ridiculous. It just shows the offensive talent on this team. Arangos goal was kind of a fluke, but it certainly made up for all the clear chances that Guiza and others failed to finish. Luckily Deportivo was so inept offensively, that Mallorcas defense was not exposed. Any other La Liga team probably would have beaten the islanders 2-1 on Saturday. Mallorca has really had a great flowing kind of play this year, but they cant seem to finish their chances. Saturday was no different. You can see the talent in their players and they are great to watch as long as you can handle the inconsistent goal scoring. No matter where they finish though, it will have been a disappointing year.

With the win, they are now in 11th spot after the weekends matches, but still only 5 points clear of relegation. La Liga has really improved to the point where all the teams can beat each other. Of course Real Madrid and Barcelona are clearly the best two teams, but you could pull the remaining teams from a hat(except Levante) and they could finish in any other position. The end result is that there will be one team that gets relegated that really isnt that much worse then the teams that qualify for the UEFA Cup. Parity has really come to Serie A and La Liga this year and that is good for all fans.

Mallorca has really become complacent because they arent playing well enough for a European spot that they cant quite reach, yet they think there is no way they can be relegated. This win was really huge as it took them further away from danger but certainly not out of it. However the players seem to be resigned to another mid level finish and many of them want European football so they are probably also thinking where they will be playing next year. With the talent on the team, the bigger clubs will be calling and there may be a lot of talent lost in the offseason. This attitude has effected their play and it will continue to be inconsistent. With the tightness of the relegation battle they cannot afford to slow down or they might be the team that gets dropped to 18th place.

For now lets enjoy a victory and count the weeks until relegation is no longer an issue. We can worry about who will be on the team next year at another time.

Category: Mallorca Team News

Tags: Mallorca Team News

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