Espanyol will return to training one Sunday afternoon in the middle of the Sant Esteve festival, thus interrupting their Christmas holidays. A phrase that sums up the nonsense of LaLiga when putting a game on December 31 at 4:00 p.m., when the calendar gave other types of possibilities. The perico team will be, therefore, the earliest team of the 20 of LaLiga.
Vicente Moreno gave his players eight days of rest, enough time to recharge their batteries and to recover troops. The coaching staff will be aware of the evolutions of Óscar Gil, Nany Dimata, David López and Álvaro VadilloMainly players who have missed the last few games due to injuries. También Keidi Bare, who has dragged annoyances that have prevented him from playing regularly in this final stretch.
Apart from finishing the first round with more than 25 points (which would mean victory), Espanyol intends to avoid ending this first episode of the championship with a victory away from home, a circumstance that has not occurred. For more complexity, there is another terrible statistic of the parrots in Mestalla, where they have not won since the 2007-08 season in which the goals of Luis García and Albert Riera gave the victory to a thrown Espanyol of Ernesto Valverde, by 2-1.
Since then, Espanyol has not been able to win in any of the 13 games they have played. He was able to match two of them, the one from the 2013-14 campaign (2-2) and the one from the 18-19 (0-0). The rest were defeats, many of them even (there is only 3-1, the rest were 1-0 or 2-1), some with controversy, such as goals in the last minutes offside or expulsions such as Sergio García, who lost four games for telling the referee “you are a scoundrel.” Encounter in which Héctor Moreno was also expelled.
The last season, 19-20, with Francisco Rufete on the bench, a Valencia already run down beat the parakeet 1-0 in a game without incentives in which the Blue and Whites once again showed their competitiveness problems. Now it is another story, although Espanyol away from home, which comes from losing to Celta (3-1) without palliative, needs to hit the table.