Dead foxes = First trophy of the season.

By: dan_c | July 23rd, 2011

gfrorer-dead_fox

A sign of things to come? I hope so.

Valencia wrapped up a comfortable victory against big-spending and ambitious English second division team Leicester City in Austria some hours ago. In doing so Los Che won the Cup Kärnten as they continued preparations for the new season. They won the best of four competition that also featured PSV and Bursaspor.

While usually it would be a more significant achievement to beat a side managed by Sven Goran Eriksson, Emery and co. and me too will be satisfied with the display.

Valencia lined up as usual with a side mixed with youth and experience. The changes were wrung at half-time. In fact it was virtually a new team in the second 45 as 7 changes were made, including Dani P grabbing his debut. He immediately formed a good partnership with M-Top, and they ran the show from midfield for the rest of the game.

The only goal of the game came soon after the twentieth minute. Jonas and Ari Ad combined well, resulting in a nice goal for our young Brazilian.

As with all pre-season games, much of the point was to build match fitness. Evidently by this performance we are not quite where we need to be yet in this department, but plenty of time to fix that. The Foxes actually had their best spells of the game towards the end of each half, when our two line-ups tired.

The game didn’t give many clues as to Emery’s idea of our first choice starting line-up for next season. We can be pleased to pick up another clean sheet though, against a physically tough side that offered a different challenge to our back line. We need to be ready for all forms of play when we take on the Champo League again next year.

The transfer market has gone very quiet, but for now, especially in the case of players linked with moves away from the Mestalla (Mata for example), no news is good news.

Dani wasted no time in showing his belief that Valencia can compete with the Old firm this season. More extensive analysis of that comment and its merit to come, but in short:

Compared to Barca/Madrid

GK: Solid, but not top quality. Barca and Madrid both have outstanding goalkeepers that often provide the leadership, inspiration and great performances to help the teams over the line. Evidence of how the lack of an outstanding goalkeeper can be the difference between good and great teams is clear in the cases of Arsenal and others.

DEF: No ways! I don’t feel much needs to be said here.

MID: Closest of the sections. Full of youth, verve and quality, with massive potential, if we can hold on to these young men, we won’t be too far off in the near future.

STR: Soldado is class but we need more than one outlet of goals to compete with the best. Madrid and Barca have goalscorers in droves and so always have options to find that goal to win the tight game on a bad day.

STAR FACTOR: We fall short here too. Every top side has many very good players, but also a few great ones who can turn the world on its head in the time it takes Paris to commission a sex tape. Looking at Madrid and Barca, Ronaldo, Ozil, Xavi, Iniesta, Messi. We don’t have that. Maybe Mata in a few years, maybe Soldado given a great season, but unfortunately, unless you have Barcas youth academy, those players need to be bought with cash that we simply don’t have.

CONCLUSION: Sorry Dani, but for now I disagree. We only need to cast our minds back to our 6-3 loss to Madrids bench last year and reflect on the gap in points between us and the top two, and then add our financial turmoil, to see that we aren’t there yet. On a good run of form like the beginning of last season, maybe we can hang around, but not match them for long periods.

I hope and pray that Valencia will humiliate me beyond repair this year and take the Old firm all the way.

May Los Che do to me what Man U and Ferguson did to Alan Hansen.

Amunt

ps. happy birthday johnny