Matchday 19 (+ Supercopa final) Preview

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1:23Hello everyone and welcome to the TSP Friday Preview Podcast. I'm Phil Kitramilidis, Sid Lowe is with me as ever to look ahead to the final round of the first half of La Liga fixtures. It's match day 19. Hello Sydney. Good morning Philip. It's a reduced round of fixtures because the Spanish Super Cup is being played. So there were a couple of fixtures that were played corresponding to the teams who were involved in that competition, which is taking place in Saudi Arabia. So these are the eight matches that are being played this weekend, Friday night, tonight. You better bloody be there, Sid. Getafe Real Sociedad.

2:00Phil Kitromilides:I'm not going to be there, but for a very good reason, which is that I'm commentating on this one. So I will be watching it, but from a studio, not from a stadium. well I mean yeah okay I'll just about give you that although it is disappointing yeah I mean in a way in a way surely it's even it's he you know I'm giving it even more of my time by having to go to the studio rather than having to go to the stage right next to my house more of your time and attention you know I have to really concentrate yeah instead instead of instead of spending my time trying to work out who those people are the director's box yeah or you know messaging us on your phone or you know all sorts of other silly stuff um you're going to be at Oviedo Betis aren't you on Saturday?

2:38I am indeed. I will be commentating it. Absolutely cannot wait. Woof! Yeah.

2:46Villarreal against Alavesi Saturday afternoon, then Girona against Osasuna and a really, really big game at Mestalla. It's Valencia against Elche. Rayo against Mallorca and Levante against Espanyol are the only two matches on Sunday. And then we've got Sevilla against Celta Vigo. We do also have... Rayo, you're going to, are you? I'm going to Rayo, So, yes, which is a nice kick-off time. I will see you there. We'll go with the boy, 2 o 'clock on a Sunday. And, yes, we do also have the Spanish Super Cup final, which, surprisingly, is between Barcelona and Real Madrid. Real turn-up.

3:20Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, I was thinking that. And this is the preview pod, but I don't know if we should be doing a bit of post-view of the semi-final. I think we can preview the final. Good idea. We can do that. Okay, so we've sort of changed up the structure a little bit of the preview pod. we want to make sure that we mention all of the games and give at least a little thought on all of the games. And to do that, we're going to do predictions for all of the matches. Some of them we'll expand upon a little bit more, some of them a little bit less. But this way we talk about at least a little bit every single game.

3:52So, Sid, Friday night, Getafe against the Real Sociedad Getafe with lots of players missing.

3:59Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, no centre-backs, basically. No centre-backs with Duarte and Gennet suspended and with Abka almost certainly injured. So prediction for this one, Sydney? It will be dirty. But I think there's a famous quote about life in the Middle Ages, which I think is nasty, brutish and short. I think this game might have two of the three. I think it might end up being quite long, but nasty, brutish and long. And I'm going to go for a draw. Real Sociedad are actually the team that commit the most fouls in La Liga this season, statistically. So them up against Getafe. It could be, yeah, it could be a bit of a bloodbath.

4:38Then, all right, Oviedo against Betis. Yeah, I mean, there is very little reason for optimism when it comes from an Oviedo perspective, Sid.

4:47Phil Kitromilides:To be honest, there's not a huge amount of reason for optimism, no. I mean, for what it's worth, in the home games over the last six, seven, eight weeks, I think Oviedo have played okay, but they just haven't scored any goals. And Fede Vines, who finally scored last weekend, also got sent off, his third red card of the season, so he's not available. We were just saying that Getafe have no defenders. Oviedo basically have no forwards. And there's a very strange situation, which is that Vines is suspended. Alex Forres, well, Rondon has been sold. Alex Forres was about to be sold, but they said, you can't go yet because we've got a game and we haven't got any other forwards.

5:21Phil Kitromilides:and they signed Thiago Bordas and he's a centre forward and the manager at the end of the game last weekend said he's not available yet, he hasn't trained for a month so he can't play now and I don't really, you know, I don't know enough of the details here but it strikes me as a bit bizarre to sign someone in the winter window who's not available immediately this is when you're signing people that you need right now at the moment the best available striker for El Oviedo is the club doctor and I'm not even joking I wish I was. Sid's friend, Diego Cervera. Well, we won't see him. We'll see how Oviedo get on.

5:59I mean, who is Thiago Borbas's agent?

6:03Phil Kitromilides:I don't know, but Thiago Borbas... Someone did very well. Yeah, he's a Uruguayan who's playing in Brazil where he'd scored, I think, two goals so far this season in 17 or 18 games. So I'll be honest with you, I'm not enormously optimistic. So if we're looking at this from a prediction point of view, Betis are a significantly better team I'm still going for a 0-0 draw I'm going to keep up keep up recent traditions and say 0-0 draw Betis who had only lost once away from home all season and that was at the Bernabeu last time out I did see them play a 0-0 draw with Rayo a couple of weeks ago in Bayekas where they were staggering absolutely lost that game I think they're a strange team I don't think they're that great certainly not away from home more draws away from home than any team in the division.

6:50Phil Kitromilides:I didn't know that. Six of their nine games on the road have been drawn. Well, it's a nil-nil draw. As they say in Spanish, it's whiten in a bottle. It's Blanco y Nimbote. It's true. Okay, then we've got Villarreal against Alaves. Villarreal, surely, who have a clarity about how they want to play. We're a little bit different last weekend against Elche in that they pressed a bit higher, but it's still fundamentally that same thing, that when they win the ball back, they're really, really clear about what they want to do. at home against Alavesh, who I think will probably be pretty bit offensive.

7:24Phil Kitromilides:And so maybe it might be a question of how... So will Villarreal. Yeah, exactly. Well, I was going to say this. It might be a question of how long it takes Villarreal to get through them. And Villarreal don't really want teams to come and do that because they'd rather teams stepped onto them a little bit. But Villarreal, home win for this one. Okay. Then after that, we've got Girona against Osasuna. I'm beginning to see, as they say in Spanish, green shoots with Girona. Yes. They're just outside the relegation zone, but they've won two of the last three. Yeah, absolutely. To be honest, I'm seeing them a little bit with Osasuna as well.

7:56Phil Kitromilides:And here comes horrendous bias, which journalists shouldn't say in a podcast like this, but I'm devastated about both things. Because in Oviedo's desperate search for three teams that might be worse than them, I had these two down as potentials, and I don't believe that's the case anymore. So I agree with you. I'm going home winning this one, yeah. This just shows how sort of tight things are. Osasuna, in theory, looking pretty comfortable in 12th spot in the table. They're just three points above the relegations. It is ridiculously tight at the bottom of the table. So we'll see how they get on against Girona.

8:33Girona.

8:36Phil Kitromilides:You've done it now. I don't believe it. Well, if it's in my head, it's going to be in your bloody head, Sid. All right. All day. Ruined. All day. Then this big game at Mestaya on Saturday night. It is Valencia against Elche Valencia, who are in the relegation zone. Valencia who cannot afford to sack their manager, Carlos Corbaran, because they're still paying out the last manager, Ruben Baraja. And also he's very good friends with the CEO. And he's basically got a job there. I was going to say for as long as he wants. We'll see if the situation gets untenable. They are currently in the relegation zone at the halfway point of the season, which is basically untenable.

9:13for Valencia. They've got 16 points from a possible 54. I still think there is a squad or at least a first team capable of having picked up more than those 16 points of 54. I'm not saying they should be challenging for Europe, but I do think there are players there that are good enough for them not to be battling for relegation. Not a terrific team, not an amazing team, certainly a team which has been asset stripped consistently over the last few years in a squad with very little money spent on it but i do still feel like these players are underperforming and they're up against an elche team who are wildly overperforming certainly on our expectations you have seen a lot of eda serrabia and you know how he works you know the man uh pretty well and you probably had a better notion that elche might do all right this season but they have wildly uh overachieved and outperformed our expectations.

10:06Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, they're a curious team out, I suppose, in a way, which is to say that they, I think in terms of the quality of their performances, they've overperformed. I think in terms of the results, maybe they haven't. Well, they still have, but you should expect them to be down where, you know, not maybe where Oviedo are, but down close to the relegation zone. I guess in terms of points, they're not a million miles away from there because, as you've said, it's become quite tight all the way from the last European place. Yeah, all the way from the last European place to the relegation zone. Pretty much everyone is sort of in that rough area.

10:33Phil Kitromilides:I think they've played better than their results have been, and yet their results have been pretty good for a newly promoted team. In fact, they've been very good for a newly promoted team. And fundamentally, the thing with Elche, I suppose, is that, shall I use a slightly cliched word, when you watch them, you can see the process. You can see that this is a team that is doing what it's trying to do and has got a very clear sense of what it wants to do, which doesn't mean they always get it right. I do think at times that they maybe are not as creative as they might be, particularly when the other team decides right we're going to protect ourselves and I thought we saw that in the second half last week against Villarreal I thought that their response to going 2-0 down to Villarreal at home was really good until half time and then the second half once Villarreal had effectively you just said it a couple of minutes ago Villarreal can be defensive when Villarreal effectively said all right well we'll wait here I felt like Elche lacked a little bit of imagination or creativity or spontaneity if you like to to find a way through um but I think you're right though that this the big part of this is Valencia.

11:33Phil Kitromilides:And I think it's important what you've said because I think multiple things can be true. And I think that the fact that Valencia have this structural, institutional, financial problem that they've had for seven, eight years now, that they've been asset stripped, that they don't have the players they used to have, that there isn't a kind of, if you like, a social peace, for want of a better word, in that the fans are on edge a lot of the time. All of those things. I think shouldn't deflect from what you rightly say, that there is a bottom line here, and that is that with these players, this team should be better than this.

12:09Phil Kitromilides:I'm not saying this team should be great. Right, okay. It shouldn't be, but it should be better than this. It should. I don't think it should be a brilliant team. I don't think it should be finishing much above 11th, 10th, 9th, something like that. But I think it should be around that area. And who knows, by the end of the season, it might be. But the way it's performing, it absolutely shouldn't be. Now, I'm going to go on now about someone I go on a lot about a lot because I have this weird sort of fascination and affection for him. You look at what Hugo Duro has done this year. Look at his number of goals in an appallingly bad team.

12:44Phil Kitromilides:Look how often they are late and that they are rescuing Valencia. And so Valencia don't have many points and they're in the relegation zone. And yet they have salvaged, I would say, I mean, I don't know how many are equalizers and how many are winners. but in the last eight or nine minutes of games, because of Hugo D 'Oro, I reckon they've probably salvaged five, six points this season. They could be even worse than they are. They are not performing well at all. At all. And, you know, I'm not someone who advocates for a manager being sacked, but you were saying about the relationship between Corbaran and Ron Goulet, who's the CEO now, who came in in part as kind of a restructuring that reinforced the position of Corbaran.

13:25Phil Kitromilides:And actually, it's something that I welcomed on the face of it because it was a way of saying, right, the football dictates. This is the part of it that we know we haven't got much money, but let's deal with this in a way that the pieces are connected, that the manager and sporting director see eye to eye, that there is, if you like, a collective identity about how we want to go about things. And so if you break that now, you possibly cause yourselves even more problems. But I do think it's true that despite that, when you see the reaction of the fans last weekend, throwing bricks at the team bus, and by the way, this absolutely is not to condone that.

13:57Phil Kitromilides:And I also think you have to be careful sometimes not to be effectively trying to reward that kind of behaviour. So you can't say, well, they've asked for it and they've chucked some bricks, therefore let's reward them. It shouldn't work like that and it doesn't work like that. But what it does do is it illustrates an enormous amount of tension. And this team is not performing well. Anyway, do you want a home win away win thing? Yes. Draw. Draw. Did you give a Girona or Susuna one? I said Girona, didn't I? Did you? Okay, good. I think so, yeah. And you've gone for a draw. Wow, that would be a bad result for Valencia.

14:36Although, you know, they're up against a team in ninth who are playing well. So let's see.

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16:24So what we're saying is... There's a chance.

16:27Phil Kitromilides:What you're saying, Phil, is that the two games I'm going to this weekend are the two grounds where it's most likely to be a 0-0. Is that what you're effectively saying? One million percent, yes. although perhaps that wouldn't surprise me enormously if that was nil nil as well we could have a few this weekend still watch guys still great I still find Rio quite enjoyable to watch even when they're not scoring goals because they're a frustrating obviously look you're watching them with skin in the game as it were they're a frustrating team when they don't score because you do see the missed chances I think the difference between them and say for example or even a Getafe who actually score more goals than they create, in my view.

17:08Phil Kitromilides:There's not very much happening with Rio, at least at times, not always, but at times there are things happening. They have the worst goals minus expected goals differential in the league. They've scored 10 goals fewer than they should have. That's perfect. So that's the statistical backup for what I've just said in terms of the sensations. So that, you know, they should score more. Whereas if you looked at that same stat for Oviedo, my guess is that they probably haven't scored very many more or very many less than their expected goals. No, no. Oviedo are way down. Way down. They've scored eight goals fewer than they should have.

17:45Oh, wow. OK. Only have the Leicester and Rayo have a worse.

17:49Phil Kitromilides:I didn't. Well, you know what? Watching Oviedo, I don't feel like that. I don't feel like we've missed many chances. I do feel like we've missed some bad ones, but I don't feel like there's loads of them. It's not like our volume of production is very... I mean, a lot of them were last week against LOS. That is true, you know, that game itself has bumped us up. I also think that there's something that Arasate said last week, which speaks to what you were talking about, about how compressed it's become. And Mallorca had won a couple of games and had put themselves in a position where it felt like, OK, we can escape that pack of teams that are being pulled into this.

18:21Phil Kitromilides:And then they got beaten last weekend. And Arasate said exactly that. He said, it felt like we'd taken a step forward. And this was the opportunity to take a step away, not just forward, but away from this. and we blew it. And he was furious. He said this great line. He said, even I can't put up with myself. Because I get so angry about this. I get so irritated. I get so frustrated that I can't put up with myself. I don't think New York are a great team. But I do think they've got just about enough to survive. I think this has got 0-0 written all over it, I'm afraid. It absolutely does. And then you've got Levante hosting Espanyol.

18:56Levante in 19th, Espanyol in 5th, Sydney.

19:00Phil Kitromilides:I don't know how to judge Levante because they scored three at Sevilla last weekend with a new manager. I don't know if that's a genuine shift. It's a bit of a one-off. If it really is a change in their game. So I don't actually know how to kind of foresee their approach, to be perfectly honest with you. Can you foresee a prediction? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm going to... Shall I go for a home win? I'm going to go for a home win. That would also be very bad for Oviedo. It would be, exactly. And the Monday night game is Sevilla against Celta. Sevilla, of course, off the back of that 3-0 defeat at home to Levante.