Real Mallorca look for their first win

Mallorca’s prime objective is to get their first home win. With the international break on the horizon we need to get 10 points. At the moment we have seven points from eight games, two less than this time last season. After the break we face a formidable away fixture at Real Sociedad’s Reale Arena in San Sebastian.

Coach Aguirre who, at last, seems to have found the perfect position for Sergi Darder, will be without Maffeo, Raillo and Jaume Costa. That means losing three of last season’s starting five in defence. It’s most likely Aguirre will stick with the 4-4-2 system that did so well against Barcelona and we’re desperately unlucky not to get three points at Rayo Vallecano last Saturday. After a wobbly start, Mallorca are beginning to get their act together.

In attack Vedat Muriqi is back to what he does best, scoring goals, and he and Abdon Prats sit high in the “pichichi” – maximum goal scoring table, both with four goals. Abdon Prats has become an undisputed starter and the striker from Arta has emerged as one of the best Spanish-born strikers so far this season. His goal scoring ratio is impressive. He scores a goal every 50 minutes almost with every attempt he’s had on target. Our makeshift defence is creaky but that’s mainly due to our injury list. Two of the backbone of the team, Raillo and Maffeo, will be out for several weeks and we’re finding it difficult to replace these stalwarts.

The big news is that at last Sergi Darder is producing the goods. After a poor first half against Rayo last Saturday, he suddenly found form after the break. His world class through ball set up our second goal scored by a rejuvenated Antonio Sanchez. Javier Aguirre has used Darder in all possible midfield positions, pivot, right midfielder and left midfielder. In the second half against Rayo, Aguirre moved him in between Sanchez and Dani Rodriguez which allowed Darder to focus on a specific role which didn’t need so much physicality. He almost carried the whole team on his back after half time.

Everything last Saturday was going great until the unfortunate penalty debacle in the 98th minute. In an incredible period of stoppage time, the referee visited the VAR screen three times in nine minutes!

Tomorrow’s opponent Valencia have become a “basket case” club over the past few seasons. Taken over by Singaporean business magnate Peter Lim in 2014, he proceeded to sell their best players to help pay off their massive debts. Under Lim’s ownership Valencia have lost 323 million euros in six years. That meant that following massive cuts the squad’s quality dropped alarmingly and there’s regularly massive fan protests at the way Valencia FC is being run. A regular sight at the Mestalla are huge placards with “Lim go home” written on them. Things have improved slightly on the pitch with boss Ruben Baraja going for youth and the average age of the first team squad is just 22 years of age.

If any Real Mallorca supporters work on Saturday they’re going to miss more games. Match day 11 sees us entertain Getafe on Saturday, October 28 at 6.30pm, then we’re away on match day 12 at Betis the following Saturday at 4.15pm. That’ll be 10 Saturday games so far this season.

VAR or rather the people who are in charge of it are back in the news again. An obvious mistake was there for all to see at the Spurs/Liverpool game and we had a problem at Rayo last Saturday. There’s nothing worse than celebrating a goal only to find out minutes later that it’s been disallowed.

VAR is meant to review decisions in a bid to reduce the risk of human error – or to ask the referee to view the pitch-side monitor. Last week’s penalty against us in the 98th minute was diabolical to say the least. Football can be chaotic, harsh and tug at the emotions and often VAR decisions take place towards the end of the game. A new innovation at the Son Moix is our LG state-of-the-art video screen which can show us fans incidents involving VAR from various angles.

My biggest rant at the moment is the accidental handball rule. In the rule book accidental hand ball doesn’t exist – it’s either deliberate or it’s “play on.” 95% of handball decisions (hand not top of the shoulder) given in the box are accidental – an unnatural arm position is new terminology to me. If it’s not deliberate, which is easy to see, it’s NOT handball.

AND FINALLY, a man sees a sign outside a house “Talking dog for sale.” He rings the bell, the owner appears and tells him the dog can be viewed in the back garden. The man sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there. “Do you really talk?” he asks the dog. “Yes,” the Labrador replies. After recovering from the shock of hearing the dog talk, the man asks “So, tell me your story.”

The Labrador looks up and says “Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the Government so I told the SAS. In no time at all they had me jetting all over the world, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders because no-one imagined that a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years. But all the jetting around made me tired and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger, so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at Heathrow to do some undercover security work, wandering around suspicious characters and listening in. I was awarded several medals then decided to get married, had a few puppies and now I’ve just retired.”

The man is amazed. He goes back into the house and asks the owner how much he wants for the dog.
“Ten quid” says the owner. “Ten quid? But this dog is absolutely amazing. Why on earth are you selling him so cheaply?” “Because he’s a lying b*****d, he’s never been out of the garden!!”