19 games, 21 points and currently sat 17th but with a 4 point cushion to 18th. Its been a strange first half of the season for Espanyol.

After an ok start, away defeats to Manchester City and Porto and home defeats to Benfica and Stoke saw the Spanish side lose four on the bounce finding the net just once and conceding 6 goals in the process. It left the club with just 13 points from 15 games, firmly in the drop zone, and needing an injection of hope from somewhere.

Fast forward four games, and Espanyol have taken 8 points from 12 with credible draws against Bayern Munich and Chelsea, with wins coming against Verona and Levante. In this mini run the club has scored 4 and conceded just 1.

In the domestic cups, Espanyol exited the cup in round 3, with a loss to Benfica. Whilst they faired much worse in the domestic shield exiting in round 1 to lower division opposition in Rubin Kazan. Given the club fielded reserve teams for all these fixtures, then priority was firmly on the league.

Espanyol cruised through their European SMFA shield group winning all 6 games, and qualifying for the next stage.

In total , including league, cup, youth and Europe Espanyol’s record stands at.

PLAYED – 31

WON – 14

DRAWN – 7

LOST – 10

GOALS FOR – 45

GOALS AGAINST – 25

CLEAN SHEETS – 16

Espanyols core strength has definately been their ability to keep clean sheets with that being achieved in 51.6% of games.

interestingly the club has averaged scoring 1.45 goals a game, although this is heavily inflated by the clubs great form in Europe. With the league goals to ratio just 0.84 a game.

The team has a season finish target of 14, and have this week completed the signings of Suarez and Firmino both 93 rated, with the hope of increasing the goals for column in the league. Given the team has achieved 21 points in the first half of the season, barring a disaster you would expect the team to improve on that over the second half of the season and retain its division 1 status and get close to achieving this seasons objective of 14th