Little local joy on football’s return

Barça

De­spite an away win against Mal­lorca (4-0) and home wins against Leganés (2-0) and Ath­letic (1-0), two away draws since the restart at Sevilla (0-0) and Celta (2-2) have cost the blau­grana dear and al­lowed arch ri­vals Real Madrid to steal a march on them at the top of the table. After win­ning all their games since re­turn­ing to ac­tion, Zi­dane’s side now have a two-point lead at the top with six games re­main­ing. Of those six games, only three would ap­pear to offer any threat to the merengues – Ath­letic and Granada away and Vil­lar­real at home – while Barça’s re­main­ing games in­clude a visit from the ever-dan­ger­ous Atlético and an away fix­ture at a resur­gent Vil­lar­real, mean­ing the odds of win­ning this year’s La Liga title are now in Madrid’s favour.

Es­panyol

Just four games after the restart, and with seven of the sea­son re­main­ing, Es­panyol parted ways with head coach Abelardo fol­low­ing a sec­ond straight de­feat. It had all looked so much brighter for the periq­ui­tos when they won their first game back, 2-0 at home to Alavés, giv­ing them a fleet­ing glimpse of sal­va­tion. But that was fol­lowed by a 0-0 draw at Getafe be­fore losses to Lev­ante at home (3-1) and Betis away (1-0). Re­gard­ing the de­ci­sion to sack Abelardo, Es­panyol fan Jason Humphreys told Cat­alo­nia Today: “Abelado has the best points per games ratio of the three man­agers this sea­son and has been with­out the goalscor­ing tal­is­man Raúl de Tomás since the restart. Very harsh de­ci­sion verg­ing on the ridicu­lous”. Sub­sti­tute coach Fran­cisco Rufete’s first game in charge was a daunt­ing one at home to league lead­ers Real Madrid, which they sub­se­quently lost 1-0, leav­ing Es­panyol an­chored at the bot­tom of the table on 24 points from 32 games, 11 points from safety with six just games now re­main­ing. If it is not al­ready too late, now would be the time for fans to get the prayer mats out.

Girona

With six games left of the reg­u­lar sea­son, Girona are still vying for a play-off place to win a spot back in La Liga. How­ever, their form since re­turn­ing to ac­tion has been very mixed, with just one win, 2-0 at home to Nu­man­cia, two 0-0 draws, away at Las Pal­mas and at home to bot­tom-placed Rac­ing, and two dam­ag­ing de­feats, 1-0 at Elche and 2-0 at Malaga. The race for play-off places is fierce, with a whole nine teams within five points of Girona at the time of writ­ing, three of whom they still have to play be­fore the end of the sea­son. Two more of the other six games are against lead­ers Cádiz and third-placed Alme­ria, mean­ing that it is going to take quite a re­mark­able run-in to hold on to that prized play-off spot. Head coach Pep Lluís Martí was pos­i­tive after the lat­est de­feat, how­ever, ex­press­ing his con­vic­tion that the team would still “find a way to ful­fil their ob­jec­tive”.