Speechless…what do you all think?

By: Ryan | October 9th, 2007

I got an email yesterday from an Offside reader asking me why I haven’t written about Sevilla’s defeat to Deportivo 1-0 on Sunday.

I didn’t write until now because basically…I’m speechless. Really I am. 15th place? I must be dreaming.

Sure I have some ideas maybe on what to do, but running them through my head, I can’t get anything to stick. What do you do, sit Kanouté and Koné? Pull Dani Alves? Start Tom De Mul in the midfield? Give the boot to Juande? What do you really do?

It’s crazy to think that the team that were the holders of 4 cups coming into the season and won the Supercopa de España can really be in the position that they are in now. As I’ve said before, we only lost 4 players from last season, and we are getting beat by teams that shouldn’t even be in the same league as us. Deportivo? We should be blowing them away, the same with Espanyol.

Most of the Spanish dailies say that we have really lost our heads. Juande says that we’ve lost our style of play. I don’t see the same attacking Sevilla from last year, when we fearlessly went for goal and peppered the opposing keeper with shots. We are playing scared and waiting for the game to come to us. Even in the Getafe game in the beginning of the season we were attacking. Now, the spark is gone. AS says that Sevilla isn’t now what they were.

Marca gives a few reasons for the reason Sevilla are down lately. The first is the death of Puerta, which is something to talk about. I don’t believe that is causing all of the problems lately.

One of the main reasons is that Javi Navarro is still out with an injury. He is expected to be back in January according to the latest reports, but that is still far off.

Another reason is that Sevilla relies too heavily on Kanouté for goals. I agree with this one to an extent. Conversely, Koné and other Sevillistas should be chipping in their fair share as well. It’s not that Sevilla relies on Kanouté to score, but rather that lately he is the only one that CAN score.

It looks to some extent that the wheels are falling off. Today in As.com, Jesus Navas’ agent says that he is one of the worst paid players on the team. He still has the same contract from when he was a ‘kid.’

Dani Alves said today that the fans look at him differently since everything happened, but that he doesn’t care what they think. He also says that he is happy in Sevilla and the team is very united. Capel is still left out of the lineup. And I’m not sure why since he played rather well being his first full season with the first team.

This international break is more important than ever. Most clubs hate it if they are on a roll, or love it if they are in our position.

For Sevilla, they need to right the ship and get things back on track…fast.

What do you all think?

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On a funny note, I found out that www.sevillafc.es can be translated into English, which makes for hilarious mistranslations of articles. They should really hire an English speaker with Spanish as their L2 to translate, not the other way around. It’s worth the read.

Also, if you can understand Spanish, you need to check out ‘Muchachada Nui’ on TVE2 (Formally La Hora Chanante), or check it out on YouTube. Here is one of the best skits, Marcial, which is essentially about life in Rural Spain, more specifically life in Castilla La-Mancha, where I lived. My town had 10,200 people in it and was 45 square miles wide, no lie. It was an experience, I can tell you that. (Villacañas Wiki) Thanks to people like this, I talk like I’m ‘de pueblo’.