A New Fan

By: Javier | November 28th, 2009

baby Well as many of you may know my wife and i became proud parents on Saturday morning at 3 am to a healthy 7.2 lb baby boy.

His name is Paris Alejandro De Roque so keep an eye out in about 17 years at Nou mestalla.. im sure he will be a striker the way he was kicking my wife during her pregnancy.

Well needless to say as a result of the wonderfull arrival i missed the match and have had little time to do any writing at all. Though i did catch the match highlights and oh man what a game.

It was well played by our boys and im truly impressed by Dealbert and Navarro. Cant wait to see us in Mestalla this weekend.

So i know its been a while since the last update

but no worries, as usual a reader comes to the rescue.

Here with a preview of Valencia vs Mallorca this week is Nithin Thazheveetil

katate Valencia vs Mallorca: Time to pull away

El Clasico. That effectively summarizes almost all football articles written this week. Every football writer/pseudo-writer worth his salt has written something on it (except Cesar of course, who is rumoured to be roaming some distant galaxies to keep away from anything related to football and re-ignite his waning interest in the same). So here’s my take on the Clasico.

Oh wait, this is about the other exciting match this weekend. The one that pits our beloved, in 4th place, against Mallorca in 6th at the Mestalla. Mallorca come into this match on the back of a win against Almeria, but that doesn’t mean much as Mallorca’s season makes sense only in 2 separate halves.

Mallorca’s impressive placing is the result of their form at home, where they have won all their matches. In stark contrast, they are yet to win a match away from home. Here are their stats home and away.

Home g w d l f a gd pts rank
6 6 0 0 16 2 14 18 1
Away
5 0 2 3 5 12 -7 2 14

duda Even not considering the results, they have been excellent at home, scoring 16 and conceding only 2 while they have scored 4 and conceded 12 on the road. This record, however, seems a little less strange once you take a look at the teams they’ve played. At home, they’ve played Xerez, Tenerife, Valladolid, Getafe, Racing & Almeria and they have visited Villareal, Sevilla, Sporting, Atletico & Barca. And they follow it up with trips to Valencia and Osasuna. Not a bad bunch to come across on your travels, right?

Mallorca has a tendency to score late in the game, with two-thirds of their goals scored in the second half and two-thirds of that in the last 15 minutes. Their equalizer against Atletico and winner against Almeria came in the dying moments of the respective matches. That is something we’ll have to be wary of. Their top goalscorer is Aduriz with 5, with Valero and Webo, among others, also contributing their fair share. The player to watch for me, however, is their goalkeeper Aouate who has been in excellent form. Watch this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C7VwsAGTsM) from their last away game against Barca, where they gave an impressive performance.

We go into this match on the back of 4 consecutive wins, including a morale boosting one at the Reyno de Navarra. Our home form hasn’t been as good as our away form due to 3 draws early on, but one of them was an impressive game against Barca and the other two came at a time when our defense was in shambles. The defense has improved much since then, and with Navarro and Dealbert supporting Cesar we have let in only 2 goals in our last 6 league matches.

train I’m still not entirely happy with our team’s defending as a whole though. Once we get a couple of goals lead, we have a tendency to sit back and let the opponents attack us. And that has been leading to goals of late, especially and inexplicably if we have a man advantage. I’m okay with taking your foot off the pedal once we have a good lead, but do that by knocking the ball around in the midfield, not by giving up the ball every time we get it and letting the opponents attack all the time. With that kind of constant pressure, chances will be created and it’ll be hard to avoid conceding.

naca At the other end of the pitch, we have been doing rather well. We have scored 22, which is the third best in the league behind the usual suspects. We have Villa, the current leading goal scorer, who can pull out moves you’d never have dreamed of. But he’s not the only one who’s been scoring. Mata, Silva, Pablo, Joaquin and even Navarro has goals against their name. In fact, Emery put two defensive midfielders on the pitch last match and they scored two and created the third. I reckon its Banega’s turn next. Add to that the fact that Mallorca likes to attack and play a high defensive line facilitating counters and we shouldn’t have too much trouble scoring.

A win here is very important for us for several reasons. Mallorca is a direct rival for European places, at least for the moment, and with a win, we can pull clear by 7 points. Among our other direct rivals, Sevilla in 3rd play bottom club Malaga with a Sevilla win looking most likely and Depor in 5th are just 2 points behind us. Also, a draw in El Clasico could see us move within a point of Barca and 2 points of leaders Real Madrid. More importantly, we play Real at home in 2 weeks time and wins against Mallorca and Atletic could mean we go into that match with a chance of going past Real. How awesome would that be?

mig I haven’t found a list of players anywhere, but it appears that Miguel will be left out again this weekend. Dealbert has recovered from gastroenteritis and along with Silva should be available to play. Manual Fernandes has apparently recovered from another ankle sprain he suffered, but it remains to be seen if he will play. My lineup would be the usual Cesar, Bruno, Navarro, Dealbert, Mathieu, Banega, Marchena, Mata, Silva, Pablo and Villa with Albelda and Joaquin getting a run our later on depending on the state of the match.

In the corresponding fixtures this decade, we have drawn one and lost one, winning the rest. The loss came in the Koeman era, I believe, which would make perfect sense. So I’m going to go ahead and predict a Valencia win here, taking our winning streak to 5 matches. No predictions for goal scorers though. The way it is going, it could be Cesar for all I know.

Finally, here’s what Mata http://soccernet.espn.go.com/preview?id=275581&cc=4716 and Manzano (http://www.goal.com/en/news/12/spain/2009/11/27/1650411/mallorca-have-nothing-to-lose-against-valencia-coach-manzano) had to say about the match. Superdeporte has an interview (http://www.superdeporte.es/valencia/2009/11/28/emery-debemos-prudentes-mejorar/79369.html) with Emery as well, but it is in Spanish.

Now let me go read up some more on El Clasico.

Nithin Thazheveetil

Thanks to Nithin for the helping hand this week. I look forward to catching the next match.

AMUNT VALENCIA
Javier De Roque