The odyssey of Vicente Moreno

Beyond the scratches that the controversy leaves on the skin, due to the penalty at the last moment that led to the loss to Real Sociedad (1-0), the performance of Espanyol in Anoeta leaves several subcutaneous layers of conclusions that result in the performance that the perico team has been offering at home the whole season. an approach reagent, with backward positions, which in the cases of continuing with options halfway through the second half does try to timidly stretch. A style that has given eight points out of 45 possible –for the 28 of 45 harvested at the RCDE Stadium– and that went one step further this Monday.

La Liga Santander

*Data updated as of April 5, 2022

Ante la Real societyEspanyol signed on lowest possession percentage not of the season, in First, but of the entire Vicente Moreno erasince its landing in the summer of 2020 to successfully return to First Division. The blue and white team kept the ball only 31.85% of time, and that the input in the 56th minute of Óscar Melendo contributed, together with the sediment of Sergi Darder, to vary the script of the match and to keep a ball that in the first half had burned –from a deeply erratic ball exit– to the point that he just kept it a ridiculous 28.4% of the game in his favor in that period. Although Real usually subdue their rivals, at home only against Getafe (70.33%) had they had more of the ball in the entire League.

The general performance in Anoeta, with 308 passes (and only 245 good ones) compared to the 662 of the ‘txuri-urdin’, with the Average position of all the starters in their own halfis one more notch in the outings of Vicente Moreno’s Espanyol, who Even so, he was two minutes away from scratching a tie in a very complicated stage and even prowled the 0-1 sometimes. And without Raúl de Tomás.

Except the unique victory in Mestalla in an even match or the brilliance of the first half of Cádiz –which later became complicated– and of certain moments of the resumption of the derby at the Camp Nouthe away team conservatism translates into bland games, in rival domain: Mallorca, Getafe, Vallecas, Vigo, the debacle in Villarreal… And in results.

Espanyol is not the worst visitor in the category, a dubious honor that they share with six points Alavés, Levante and Rayo Vallecano, and is even behind Getafe’s seven points and equals eight with Mallorca. But two of those teams are listed in the relegation zone and everyone they have changed coach during the season, except vallecanos, who present a contrast between home and away similar to that of the parakeets and who also have a pending exit, three points with which they could surpass them in this classification.

13.7% of the points out

And it doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Few statistics seduce Vicente Moreno less than his score away from him in the First Division, because he always fights back remembering, not without reason, that in the computation of his career on the bench his numbers are much more sensiblemore similar to that of their colleagues, but perhaps precisely this disparity is what confirms that it is not a mere coincidence.

And between Second A and Second B the one of Massanassa added the estimable 43% of points out (177 out of 411 possible), in the highest category is reduced to a meager 13.7%fruit of having achieved alone 14 points of the already more than 100, specifically 102which he has had within his reach, between Mallorca –when he was the worst visitor in the First Division, with six points, even behind the historically relegated Espanyol– and currently leading the Blue and Whites.

At the rate of one away win per season –In this case, in the absence of visiting Atlético de Madrid, Real Madrid, Alavés and Granada–, hardly any team on the planet can aspire to any objective higher than permanencewhich on the other hand was the goal imposed this course by the perica board to a Vicente Moreno who heads to the final stretch of the championship without having achieved that longed for balance between the more than satisfactory baggage in Cornellà and the meager loot from his outingsin the style of the mishap-filled journeys of The Odyssey.