This however brought me to wonder a few things. After Javi Varas’ amazing performance this past weekend, it’s evident that we have a future star on our hands, but with Palop on the team its unlikely that he’ll see much action. Let’s face it, the only reason he did is because Andrés was suspended. He rose to the occasion though and saved the game for us, without him Numancia could have easily had 2 or 3 goals.

Palop has been the driving force behind both of our UEFA Cup victories, as well as our three other trophies we won in the past three years. He’s also Spain’s third choice keeper and although he didn’t play at the European Championships this past summer, he was a part of the squad and therefore was considered a part of the team that were victorious in Austria/Switzerland.

Palop was only considered to be an average goalkeeper while at Valencia because he was stuck behind Cañizares (remember him Valencia fans?). The moment he came to us however, he was class, he displayed what he always had, but never got a chance to show and that was his ability in goal. I don’t want this to happen with Varas. It’s hit us smack in the face, we can’t make the same mistake Valencia did, we have a future star on our cards.

Over the summer there was the whole Valencia saga in which Palop was rumoured to probably going back to his home town and playing for the club he started at and supported growing up. In the end Sevilla wanted 5 million Euros for him, about 2.5 million more than Valencia was willing to pay so the deal didn’t go through.

Although, now that I think of it, as much as I love Palop and appreciate everything he’s done for us, I’d like to see him sold. He’s getting a bit past his prime and I think it would be smart on the management’s part to get top value for him while they still can. It’s evident that we have a gem in Varas and I would hate to see him move on because of a lack of playing time. We saw this in the summer when we loaned out Italian International Morgan De Sanctis to Galatasaray of Turkey. He was a promising prospect but it was obvious that he wasn’t better than Palop, not yet anyway. Now with Varas showing how good of a keeper he is, it also makes me wonder how De Sanctis will fit into the squad once he returns to Nervión.

I was over at the Valencia offside and many of the posters there looked worried at their goalkeeping crisis and their lack of a strong keeper. Well guys, we have three suitable candidates, mind taking Palop, your prodigal son back from us?

Navas set the tone for the game in the first minute when he struck a volley beating Fabricio. On the 23rd minute Luis Fabiano added to the Galician’s pain as he capitalized off a defensive error, stole the ball, walked it around Fabricio, and slotted it in with ease. O Fabuloso put the first nail in the coffin on the 40th minute when the two Depor defenders crashed into each other and Fabiano was there to chip it over Fabricio, the game was over before we even reached half time.

It was definitely an encouraging display of football as everyone was getting some touches in and Depor didn’t really have any promising opportunities. Once again Jesús Navas was controlling the left flank and causing havoc every time he touched the ball, and with Capel doing the exact same on the left side, Depor didn’t know what to do. Fabiano and Kanouté were in sync and always a threat to the Depor defense, Romaric and Duscher plugged up the midfield so they couldn’t attack through there and when they finally managed to penetrate that, Crespo, Escudé, Squillaci, and Fernando Navarro played solid along the back line. A all round solid performance by my boys tonight.

On the 68th minute Omar Bravo went in studs up on Romaric which meant he was ejected with a straight red. There was no end to Depor’s troubles tonight, BELIEVE ME!!

In the 75th minute came my highlight of the match. My boy Chevantón was finally back from his knee injury that has kept him sidelined since October. If you’ve read my blog since I started you’d know that I absolutely love Cheva and think he’s the best supersub since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. His return will hopefully spark some more goals to come in the future, but for now it was for something else.

Palop got a straight red on the 82nd minute for tripping up the Depor striker and was given a straight red. Since all three substitutions had already been made by Manolo Jiménez it meant that a player on the field would have to play in goal for the remaining 8 minutes plus added time and also for the penalty. Chevantón stepped up and volunteered to play in goal knowing that he would first have to face a penalty shot. Up stepped Pablo Álvarez and tried to place the goal in the bottom left corner but struck the post and then went out for a goal kick. What a series of events in the final minutes, probably the most exciting game this whole season.

The boys ended the game in style just killing time and passing the ball around. Will Depor just go away now? I’m sick of writing about them and seeing them, we’ve beat you three times, we’ve finished our business with you. We now move on to the quarter finals of the Copa del Rey but are not sure who we will face yet. Whoever it is, they better watch out, because with the way they’re playing, I can’t off the top of my head think of a team that can stop us.

With 3 victories in less than a week surely our confidence must be sky rocketing by now right? We now travel back to Nervión to take on strugglers Numancia in a game that means a lot. We must build off our win last weekend to Depor and try and get our league campaign back on track and running. Barça may be out of sight but I’d consider it a great insult if Real Mierda finished ahead of us, they’ve been awful this year.

There’s some big news going on in Nervión, I meant to actually post it yesterday but I ended up doing the review for the game instead. Look out for tomorrow’s entry!!!

¡¡VAMOS MI SEVILLA
VAMOS CAMPEÓN!!

I wish these fixtures were as easy as they seem but unfortunately they aren’t. Osasuna won their game against Getafe last week in an emphatic 5-2 display. Our peformance however, not so emphatic, a 0-0 draw with struggling Mallorca is definitely something we might look back on and regret. We’re way better than that, taking nothing away from Mallorca or anything but we deserved better. We can’t afford to drop points against any of the “lower” teams if we want to keep pace with this year’s phenomenal Barcelona side.

Fabiano said it best when interviewed about tomorrow’s game. “We have an important game coming up which we should win. With respect to Osasuna, Sevilla has to be Sevilla.” I couldn’t agree more, and this is why we have lost stupidly this year and its becoming a huge concern. We have to play the style that we’re good at and comfortable with. So many times this season we’ve tried to go up the middle or put in a bunch of long high balls. That isn’t us, we play our best football down the wings utilizing Navas, Capel or Adriano and then putting in the crosses for Kanoute and Fabiano to poach upon. It’s been clear a few times this year that our strikers, especially Kanoute, have become very frustrated with their lack of opportunities, but in all honesty it’s not their fault, our midfield has been really hit or miss this season so far. We need to play simple football, the same style that won us 5 trophies in 15 months and impressed Europe and the world. Simplicity is beautiful, let’s keep it that way.

Let’s be honest here, I hate to be cocky or arrogant but we are a much better side than Osasuna is. It’s actually quite funny because it seems like just yesterday that I was watching a Sevilla v Osasuna semi-finals in the UEFA Cup semi-finals to see who would progress to the finals. I remember it being a hard match, and although we won it was no walk in the park. We have developed quite the rivalry ever since. They had a really strong team that year and since I don’t follow them I don’t understand how they have become so bad. Have they lost a bunch of key players I don’t know about? I know they did have Carlos Vela at one time, but he’s really young so surely he couldn’t have made that much of a difference. Anyhow, it doesn’t really matter, anything less than a win tomorrow isn’t acceptable, we need to take advantage of these struggling teams.

This match became more important today when Valencia handed Atletico a 3-1 defeat. This puts Valencia in second with 33 points but us in third with 31 points and hopefully with a victory tomorrow we’ll be back in second where we belong.

Some bad news however as Luis Fabiano is a doubt to play tomorrow as he has a cold which seems to be quite contagious around the football world recently. He is included in the squad but will not start. Also, Mosquera is out as well with an ankle injury that he picked up against Espanyol several weeks back. The pain has re-occurred and he will sit out one more week to hopefully be ready for the next match.

The players called up for tomorrow’s match by Jimenez are; Palop, Javi Varas, Crespo, Escudé, Squillaci, Fernando Navarro, David Prieto, Dragutinovic, Duscher, Romaric, Maresca, Renato, Jesus Navas, Capel, Fazio, Adriano, De Mul, Luis Fabiano and Kanoute.

If you’re watching the game tomorrow look out for the sea of red and white flags in the crowd as President José María del Nido requested we bring in the new year with the ever-strong support we’re known for.

A match report will follow tomorrow’s game. Hopefully it’ll be all good news for us Sevillistas.

We went into Valladolid looking to rebound back from two consecutive defeats to Málaga last weekend in the league and SD Ponferradina on Wednesday in the Copa del Rey. I can assure you, this was definitely not what we wanted to leave Valladolid with… A rediculous call by the ref was all it took to send us back to Nervión with nothing to show for.

The game started amazing with some world class vision by Romaric to spring Navas on the right who lead a 4 on 1 break whom which then touched it to Renato who ever so calmly slotted it into the net. It only took 8 minutes for us to get another goal which we could actually say was a GOLAZZO. Some amazing buildup play by Luis Fabiano who passed off to Romaric, who then put it out to Maresca on the right wing who crossed perfectly to the foot of Navas who scored in style with I’d say, a half scissors. Luis Fabiano was showed a yellow card on the play for apparently “overly celebrating” which does not make sense what so ever because that should have meant Renato, Navas, Romaric and the rest of the team should have also considering they were all huddled up… Rediculous.

We were all over Valladolid, they didn’t even have a single attempt on goal at this point. Fabiano was sent in on goal alone when he moved around Asenjo only to be slightly knocked down by the Valldolid last man. Apparently this knock was not sufficient enough for a penalty to be called so therefore Fabiano who was already on a yellow, received another which then meant he was red carded and we were now down to 10 men.

This brings about my important question of the day – Who, at 2 goals up with only approximately 30 minutes played, would go down unfairly and beg for the penalty, especially in Fabiano’s position where he had already got around the keeper and just needed to softly touch it into the net? No one, well at least not Fabiano, he did get knocked and even the slightest knock when travelling at full speed is enough to knock anyone down, especially if it is from behind like it was in this scenario. It’s complete bullshit and as you know it, this was the turning point in the match. No, my rant isn’t over. OK, I understand that diving or “simulation to gain an unfair advantage” is against the rules of the game and results in a yellow card being given out but then why wasn’t Navas given one in the second half when he went down “softly” in the Valladolid box? What about Canobbio when Squillaci won the ball off him in the box and the ref told him to get up? Why weren’t these yellow card worthy but Fabiano’s was? What warrented this? Once again, REDICULOUS.

From this point on Valladolid obviously had the advantage as we were down to 10 men. Before the half time whistle could be blown González scored off a header which was also poorly defended by both Konko and Squillaci.

Some more bad news as Duscher was replaced at half time by Fazio after complaing about terrible discomfort while he was running in the first half. Things only got worse when Sesma’s original shot took a funny bounce off Escudé which in turn made Palop go the wrong way and then Canobbio fairly easily put it in to level the game at 2 goals each. Once again, the misery and pain was not over as in the 63rd minute, Fernando Navarro fouled Pedro León and up stepped Canobbio to score an absolute GOLAZZO way out of the reach of Palop in the top right hand corner which hit the underside of the crossbar and bounced in.

Navas as I noted earlier had an appeal for a penalty late in the match. Personally I think he went down rather easily, but if this was the case then why not a booking to go along with his simulation? Luis Fabiano’s red card, unless successfully appealed will mean once again that we are without any out and out strikers and will be forced to play Renato up top with Romaric for our UEFA Cup clash on Thursday when we travel to Belgium to take on Standard Liege (or Standard Lieja en Español) which will definitely be a make or break game, not in the sense of elimination, but if we do lose it will mean we have lost 3 consecutive games in 3 different competitions. We can’t afford to let our morale drop any lower and a win against Standard Liege will hopefully allow us to go back home with not only 3 points in the right direction for our UEFA Cup campaign, but also with high spirits when we play our fourth Andaluz derby this Sunday at El Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán against Recreativo de Huelva.