As we head towards the half way point of the season Espanyol find themselves just above the relegation zone in 17th. Its been a challenging first half of the season with the team struggling to score goals. 14 goals from 17 games is a poor return as Morata has struggled to find the net consistently and fill the void left by Aguero’s retirement. Only the bottom 2 have scored less goals, and this has been the Catalyst to the manager securing the signings of Firmino and Suarez.

In contrast at the other end of the pitch Espanyol have one of the divisions tightest defences having comceded just 18, which is 5th best in Division . As we head towards the end of the month, the manager is hoping the added fire can increase the clubs chances of reaching the contractual goal of 14th.

“you’d like to keep your key players, especially those with improvement in them. You work hard enough to bring them to the club. Ultimately though in such a competitive league results are what you are judged on and ours have just not been good enough so far this season. We are a trading club, and pride ourselves in being open to deals. It keeps things fresh and interesting. We are genuinely excited about the pending arrival of Firmino and Suarez who are division 1 and division 2’s top scorers respectively. Its been commented that Oyarzabal is an assist machine and he has certainly played his part in doing exactly that this season. However we cannot escape the goals for column. Less than a goal a game is not enough to keep us out of trouble. We continue to add youth players to our squad, who will hopefully become our next major assets. We are at that stage now, where our trading is reaching a conclusion. We’d like another right back, but beyond that I think once all our transfers are complete we have a very workable core first team. We have never been a team to settle on one formation and our business will probably see us change things a little for certain games. “