This may be heavily influenced by recency bias, but would y’all trade Villarreal’s current season for ours?
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Injuries have been our biggest problem this season. As of the end of March, Sevilla had sustained 231 instances of unavailable players during 43 official games. An average of 5+ players out per game.
At no time since the 14th of September Lope has had the entire squad available.
Lope has also pressured injured players to give him 45-60 minutes despite the dangers of aggravating lesser injuries.
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Short answer is no. They’re on a great Champions League run but stand in 7th place in the league 12 points off the Champions League. For all Emery’s European success, he doesn’t deliver in the league.
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@ShendM , I’m certainly not saying Lope shouldn’t take responsibility for the recent poor run of form as he’s ultimately the manager and sets the team up and decides the tactics and style.
However to say injuries isn’t a valid excuse, I’d have to disagree. Our injury list has been extensive for a large part of the season, missing a number of key players. A fully-fit YEN, Papu not injured, Lamela not out most of the season, that all would have made a difference to the quality of our performances if they’d been available.
Injuries have certainly had an impact and I personally think that’s undeniable.
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Tough call, but I’d say I would trade it. What’s the point of playing in CL when you can’t make it past the group stages in an easy group? Arsenal has done it all the time - in fact they’ve managed to pass the group stages at least, only to get knocked out in the 1/16th, rinse and repeat.
It is definitely a legit excuse, I’m not disregarding it completely. But I think it is valid only in certain circumstances, which Lope doesn’t qualify for. It’s not his first season, we all know how he plays and there was no consistency in trying to change that. For every ‘decent’ game that we’ve had, we got all excited and hopeful for the next one only to get disappointed… again and again. That was regardless
Or maybe it’s better to put it this way - I don’t think the injuries this season are a good enough reason to give this coach another year with the club.
Seems like a lot, but I don’t know what the avarage is, so it might just somewhat ‘usual’ for the Avarage LaLiga team.
This Lope is just weird. Just by the eye watching the games, I would say his style is pretty terrible. But when you just look at the LaLiga results, only lost 3 games so far this season. That must be, or at least close to, a club record. That would suggest he’s an amazing manager. Crazy situation at our club, haha.
That more or less is the situation, great comment. I guess we’re in unknown territory. It’s been an axiom that 7 or less defeats guarantees a champions league qualification but things seem to be changing (or maybe you don’t normally get so many draws with so few defeats).
What remains is that nobody is happy with the style of football.
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Funny ain’t it? Then you look at the extreme irritation he causes with his style, the total embarrassment in Europe and only top 4 which has been achieved by lesser known coaches in the past… totally not worth it. You can go on not losing for the entire season and you’d still be battling relegation if you don’t actually win matches.
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Even after a win yesterday, we’re still four points behind our total from last year. We’ve got some ground to make up if we are going to improve our point total.
We were fourth under Sampaoli in 16/17. Then you need to go back to 09/10 before we were in the top four again. I don’t understand some of y’all’s criticism of a top four finish. Does Lopetegui need to improve? Yes. Is is managerial style exciting to watch? Not particularly. But has he improved this team? Undoubtedly.
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Can he improve us further? Absolutely not!
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Maybe not himself, but management y Monchi sure can help in July.
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that would be the wrong attitude.
If in the end, the help isn´t the help he needed. You´re stuck in a worse place. Because it won´t improve by the manager.
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Haha good lord.
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Good lord what? Sinking ship, gets a win vs Granada, in late minutes and the leak is fixed haha.
So y’all are saying it’s impossible for a manager to improve or adapt?
You’re saying we are going to a new high with Lope?
I mean, if 3 years doesn’t show you anything…
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Thin margins. It’s not like we’re not in the mix.
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That would be looking at the straight results again, the bigger pattern is we are not improving, if not deteriorating.