Hi all, some excellent observations on yesterday’s match. I had the privilege to be at Goodison Park. It was my son’s first ever Sevilla match, so it will live in the memory for a long time!
It was a very good performance overall. Once we woke up and got into our stride, we were well above Everton I felt. With more ruthless attack play, we could have had 4 or 5 goals easily. I sat in the away end with around 200 or so Sevillistas, probably people that live in the North West of England. Many Spanish families visited which was great to see. Sevilla warmed up close to our stand, what I was struck by seeing our team up close is that physically we look a very tall and powerful team. Whether this type of player profile has been assembled by design, I’m not sure but we look a very imposing team. The star players were Correa and Banega without a doubt. They will be our best players this year. I still feel we need another striker to offer more variation that Muriel and WBY. Both are decent strikers and work for the team. They will finish chances, however personally I would like to Jovetic back. Bacca would be awesome in the team, but somehow with spending 20 million on Muriel, I’m not sure if that move will happen. Nolito looked good on the left and overall, we look a very formidable outfit. We play direct with strong running with the craft of Banega. A note on Banega, we all have our favourites, but this guy was in a league of his own yesterday, for me the best player I’ve seen in a Sevilla shirt. It’s like he never left us.
I’m looking forward to a fantastic season ahead.
A note to Tim, - In your opinion, how does this current squad compare to other seasons?
Hey Mark,
Thanks for taking the time to send us photos and the write up. I’m glad Ruben got to hit a game. I’m sure there will be plenty more for that young lad.
Yes, you’re right Mark, it’s a very imposing squad, we lost the height and bulk of Iborra but we’ve got Pizarro in there so not much change. Seeing them live in the stadium brings home the tremendous physical stature of the team. I’ll have to wait until Thursday to see them.
We’ll have to see them in adversity to see if they live up to their potential. They came back against Arsenal and Everton, so that’s a good sign. The squad is surely the best we ever assembled (and probably contains the strongest permutation of starting 11) and still not complete, let’s hope we don’t lose any of our top players in what’s left of the transfer window.
As far as the footbal goes, it’s still what the spanish call ‘poco dibujo’, the style/plan not very concrete or elaborate but that’s normal for this stage. Is it my imagination, or are we playing out of defence a bit better?
Atletico will be very worried about the their third place chances, they have an ageing squad and haven’t been able to rebuild, but their new ‘Wanda’ stadium is very impressive, it will be a fortress.
Interesting. I was watching the other day and made the comment that Rico’s distribution looked much better and then 2 seconds later he proceeded to boot it out of bounds on a goal kick. I hope we are better out of the back. That killed us last season.
This squad competes for the best ever (still not complete though), with the 2014-15 one.
Let’s see if the defensive errors will be fixed and what will the full squad be at the beginning of September, but it surely gives one quite some optimism ahead of the new season.
First thing’s first though, and a lot of the future will be dictated on whether we pass Basaksehir in the CL playoff’s or not. Any underestimation and we’re out of CL!
