Sevilla-Slavia Prague—The Must Win

By: Ryan | October 1st, 2007

I hate to say it, but this is a must win game for Sevilla.

Enough with the excuses, the past is over and it is time to look towards the future. We haven’t lost 4 games in a row since 99-00 and that was the year we last went down to the second division. And that is surely not happening this year.

I think that it is time that we wake up and realize that we are the defending UEFA Cup and Copa del Rey champs. And that is not too shabby. As I said in a previous post, we only lost 4 players from last season, and the most important of the bunch was Aitor Ocio (or possibly Kepa, but I don’t believe that one bit.)

Juande came out in as.com today and said that he is sticking with the ‘doble K’ or the ‘É’s!’ upfront, namely Koné and Kanouté, which he should have been going with all along. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think much of Koné coming into Sevilla with Kerzhakov and Luis Fabiano already strong upfront, but wow has he ever impressed me. He was by far my star of the Zaragoza game, making run after run, but lacking in his finishing.

Kanouté will benefit from another strong striker upfront. Both will be able to play the ball into each other and can also make strong runs through the box to exploit the Slavia Prague defense.

Ramos also curiously left out Fazio and Diego Capel, instead opting for the veteran lineup this weekend. I can’t say that I agree with the Capel move as he has been playing solid this season, but sometimes you may need a bit of a shake up (even though I can’t say I agree with it all the time.)

Sevilla will start– Palop—Dani Alves, Boulahrouz Escudé, Drago–Jesus Navas, Renato, Poulson, Adriano–Koné and Kanouté. However, we do have Kerzhakov and why does it pain me to say that we might start him upfront. Hell, lets play a 4-3-3 and throw the three of them upront, take off Renato, and come out all attacking.

I don’t know a whole lot about Slavia Prague since my knowedge of the lovely Czech league is a bit lacking. I know that their big go-to-guy is Vleck, but other than that, I got nothing.

So I will yet again be driving home 100 mph tomorrow for the second half of the game. I’ll give you all a good recap at the end.

!Viva Sevilla!