Hopefully things come right after World Cup and we pull away. However, the January window is vital. We simply have to have a good window to boost the squad. With these current set of players I honestly not sure they good enough to even get us to mid table or away from trouble.
We have poor and not very confident strikers, a slow/aging midfield and much weaker defence now. I don’t see a quick fix to this. We just hope to have there a few worse teams than us and we can improve after January.
If we can survive this season and have a good winter window and then summer window we can rebuild and move forward again. As for this season though it’s now about survival and showing fight and togetherness to try escape and hope January saves us.
Hopefully our fans can get us over the line in the big games against cadiz, Girona, celta, espanyol, etc at home
As a big user of statistics over intuition, I’ll say that the stats actually pushed me into a more cautious stance on this. According to FiveThirtyEight’s model, as of today, Sevilla has a 15% chance of relegation.
All very concerning…that puts us at 13th place in the table in terms of “relegation safety”, ie. only seven clubs are looking worse-off than we are right now, statistically speaking.
Now that I’ve sufficiently scared myself and you all with the data, I’ll add my general feeling about the data.
A collapsed Sevilla picks up ~1 point per match. Whereas a collapsed Girona or Valladolid picks up 0.5 or 0.4 points per match. So my view is that Sevilla seems unlikely to end up in even worse form than we are currently, whereas some weaker clubs have much further to fall if they hit a rough patch. And we thankfully already have Elche cushioning the first position. So I continue to be pretty confident that we have enough talent to eke out 45-55 points this season, even without a winter revolution. If we can find some talent to remake the midfield this winter, perhaps even more.
Don’t get me wrong, today was a depressing way to go into the parón, but we’ll have some space between now and Europa League restart in February to get our groove back. Assuming we can climb to 15th or so before February, we’ll be in much better place to avoid that unhealthy late season desperation that sets in for clubs near the bottom.
Im very nervous about a relegation battle. Something we are not mentally prepared for. I just hope we dont start playing with fear and maybe get a couple of key injuries. The January window needs almost a squad rebuild. I think we will stay up. But i have clue whatsoever about how the season will pan out.
If Acuna plays full matches with Argentina NT, his contract must be rescinded for disloyalty to the club. I don’t care that he’s one of our best players, mercenaries have no place in the club.
We needed him the most in these last 4-5 matches and he either didn’t play or played 1 half at most, saving himself for the WC. It’s totally unacceptable!
I 100% agree with this. We need players up for the fight and who want to fight for the club every day. We can’t have players who aren’t fully committed and just play when they want.
The first half hour was a shambles to be two goals down and with nine men. Even for our standards this season I couldn’t believe our implosion. The players just totally lost their heads and discipline.
Fair play after that. Mir scores a great header and we try really hard in the second half in a very difficult situation. Even towards the end we managed to create a few chances and with a little more luck, we could have nicked a draw. Sociedad did let us off the hook with an ultra conservative style but we still did well and could take some pride at the end of the game.
Ultimately though it’s another defeat and we remain in deep trouble. Let’s hope Rayo beat Celta tomorrow and we at least go into the World Cup just about outside the relegation zone. The break has definitely come at the right time for us as we need to use this time to regroup and work out how things can improve. We need players in the team who want to be playing for Sevilla and not saving themselves for World Cups and yes activity is needed in the January market.
In terms of relegation, I’m very worried and no we can’t say there isn’t a chance of it as there clearly is and after 14 games nothing has convinced me otherwise. No club is too big to go down. I remain hopefully though that we can at least drag ourselves out of this mess, hopefully with some injection in January which is never easy to do.
Right now I’d take 17th at the end of the season and move on and rebuild hopefully for better things next year. That has to be the sole aim now, even the Copa and Europa are little more than a distraction. Maintaining our league status is critical as relegation would be an absolute disaster and we do need to take the prospect of it seriously.
During El Gran Derbi, for example, Fekir got red for flapping his arms around a bit wildly and hitting someone in the face. I thought red was a pretty harsh decision. Same game, Borja Iglesias, in a similar situation, obviously takes a step backward to charge his elbow into (I think it was) Jordán’s face, not even a yellow card, while this one would be a more justified red card than Fekir’s in my opinion.
Nothing makes sense anymore as between definitely this or that is a huge margin of whatever the referee feels like. The VAR only seems like a tool to give the referee even more power to decide what he wants, contrary to that what it was intended for.
Starting to feel this way as well… I was always a fan of the idea of VAR, having lived through countless matches where you felt like the match was robbed by a phantom call or phantom non call… But the discretion of the ref in VAR is getting tiresome. And the freeze framing has to stop, they should be limited to full speed and slow motion captures, period. A freeze frame is for bad jokes like when some teenager wants to make it look like two world leaders kissed on the lips when they greeted, not for serious review by an extremely well paid referee.
Re VAR I’m not a big fan and I do feel the Rakitic challenge wasn’t a red. The slow motion footage always looks worse than real time. Nianzou’s tackle was dangerous and absolutely a red card.
None of it is an excuse though for how poor we’ve been. We’re in this position through our own doing I’m afraid.
Results haven’t improved since Sampaoli took charge which suggests to me that the problems with this team weren’t down to Lope.
There is something to this theory. Last season, the club finished 9th in the Fair Play table with 107 points, this season with only 14 matches played, Sevilla, is dead last sitting on 82 points.
We averaged 2.39 yellow cards per La Liga match last year, and this year 3.86. That is a huge jump. But what changed? The style is pretty much the same. Is the jump equated to the inexperience of Salas, Carmona, and Nianzou? Is it because players are playing out of position? Or is it just that RFEF got caught with their pants down in a text message and they are looking to punish because Sevilla called them out and they are one of the most disliked teams according to the President of RFEF?
Probably dissatisfaction in crowd, players, staff everything didn’t set out to be a relaxed, stressless season. So it’s likely a combination of many things including RFEF stirring into the mixture.
Can’t agree with that mate. The whole setup and tactics stemmed from what Lope wants. His lopeball has made the players stagnant and the collection of playmakers who need the ball has not made things better, Isco is a class act but I cannot justify adding him to a team with at least 3 other players of the same type while you only have three first team centre backs.
Nothing could change until the team limps to the winter window and try to get reinforcements. Tough this season out for a top half finish then do a total rebuild in the summer window.
I recall learning in my Sport Superstition 101 class that “Correlation is the definition of causation”, so I’m going to go with YES!
Who knows what kind of penance Monchi will need to pay before his sins of blackface are forgiven and the team can get back to its winning ways. Maybe he needs to walk backwards down the parade route used last year on Día de los Reyes Magos…to undo the curse…
We were definitely on the slide in the second half of last season and that continued at the start of this campaign. I think the time had come for a change. Lope and his tactics had become tired and he obviously signed players who suited his style. So yes he does bear some responsibility.
That said, the way the club has been ran has also had a huge impact. Monchi and the board haven’t got the strategy and the transfer policy right for a few seasons now and we’ve seen the consequence of that this year with Kounde and Carlos sold and a lack of adequate replacements for them and uninspiring signings in other areas of the team. The board hasn’t built for the future and we’re now left with a tired, ageing squad lacking in quality and in desperate need of a complete revamp. Lope was left to struggle with this and so has Sampaoli.
The club as a whole really does need to go back to the drawing board and not just look at the managers. I hope we see the start of this in January or we could slump even further.
