Espanyol makes virtue defect

After chaining 12 LaLiga games conceding goals, Espanyol, which was a rock at the beginning of the season, has been disintegrating. His virtue has become his defect, aggravated even more by the five goals received against Villarreal. The Blue and Whites have already become the third team of the era at the RCDE Stadium (not counting the course in LaLiga SmartBank) that has received the most goals at this stage of the championship.

With 40 goals in 26 games, the average for the parakeet team amounts to 1.53 goals per game. Vicente Moreno’s men have received 24 away and 16 at home and since November they haven’t been able to keep a clean sheet. Although the coaching staff works hard, “with videos and specific exercises” (Vicente Moreno dixit) in solving their problems, for the moment the defensive bloodletting continues, taken to exaggeration before a yellow team that mercilessly penetrated the parakeet defense.

There are only two seasons in which Espanyol have conceded more goals. In the 2015-16 campaign, in which Constantin Galca replaced Sergio González in Decemberthe parakeet team had received 50 goals in 26 games. Pau López and Giedrius Arlauskis became the Espanyol keepers with the most goals in their history in one season. In an agonizing way, that team achieved salvation right at the beginning of Chen Yansheng as president of the entity.

The second data is closer in time. A look that takes us to the relegation campaign, 2019-20, in which the team that had three coaches until then (David Gallego, Pablo Machín and Abelardo Fernández) accumulated 45 goals. Individual errors condemned to the pot an unbalanced and lacking confidence team, which completed the worst campaign in its history.

Vicente Moreno’s team needs to go back to being the solid team of the first 15 days, when they had only received 14 goals against top teams like Real Madrid, Villarreal, Atlético de Madrid, Real Sociedad, Athletic Club, Betis, Sevilla or Barcelonathe first classified of the championship. The template knows that any improvement happens by turning it around and that the defect becomes a virtue again.