Mallorca in four team relegation dogfight

Around 40 fans travelled to a bright and windy Girona last Saturday hoping to witness first-hand Real Mallorca hanging on to their very existence against the play-off-chasing local side, who in all honesty haven't exactly terrorised other Segunda sides. For most of the first half Mallorca dominated until they got anywhere near the penalty area where things went badly wrong. We didn't have a single shot on target, at least Girona managed to hit the bar direct from a wind-assisted corner kick.

Thirty seconds after half time came what turned out to be the killer goal. Referee Cordero Vega judged Hector Yuste had fouled Borja Garcia in the area. From our vantage point at pitch level it was difficult to make an opinion but TV clips later showed our centre half never touched the Girona player. Yuste was yellow-carded and Herrera hit the perfect spot kick high into the postage stamp right-hand corner giving Timon in goal no chance. As has happened for most of the season our heads dropped and we didn't put up any kind of reaction. We spent the rest of the second half looking like a beaten side. Ten minutes from time a deflected free kick by Campabadal was spectacularly scooped over the bar by Becerra in the Girona goal and that was all we could muster in 93 minutes of football.

The travelling support were once again disappointed by our lack of commitment and the total capitulation by the team in the second half. Us fans left the ground more exhausted than the players. Mallorca have absolutely no quality and if I was asked to name a player of the season, I wouldn't have a clue. The players don't seem to realise that we're supposed to be fighting for our second division existence.

SUMMING UP: After the game we went to one of Girona's finest eateries and the normal post-match ambience was somewhat spoilt for me by Mallorca's complete lack of motivation: it was so depressing to watch, I found it difficult to get into the frivolities. We had seats at pitch level just next to the Mallorca dug-out, so we saw lots of goings-on in the technical area. As if our play wasn't bad enough, to see our players arguing amongst themselves then witnessing last week's hero now turned villain, Ortuño, having a slagging match with the coach, didn't exactly fill the watching fans with confidence. Viewing the game from pitch level also gave me a new perspective on proceedings and showed just how intense some of the flying tackles were. The local press on Sunday morning in Girona described the game as “un partido con mucho músculo y poco futbol”. That description summed up the game to a tee. The Spanish second division is bereft of any stand-out team this season and certainly we all wondered how on earth Girona are in with a shout of promotion. Their small Montilivi ground (capacity 9,200) had its biggest gate of this campaign on Saturday - 5,613. It was a really animated arena, unlike the soulless Son Moix, and the teams came out to a rousing anthem called, believe it or not, “Girona, Girona”, a sort of Catalan version of The Proclaimers' “500 miles”.

At one stage in the second half Vazquez made a change and the job of showing the on-coming player what to do (on a piece of paper) was done by our physio. Surely that can't be right. The longer the game went on, the more unlikely we were to score a goal; we were pathetic. On Saturday for the first time in 70 starts, Real Mallorca actually picked the same team that began last week, for all the good it did.

It's going to go right down to the wire with three games left to play – it's all too much. As if we weren't suffering enough at the moment, our director of football, Miguel Angel Nadal, was in Bulgaria last weekend, jollying it up at Hristo Stoichkov's fiftieth birthday party. Unbelievable.