Fright night for Real Mallorca away from home. | Majorca Daily Bulletin reporter

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Alaves beat Real Mallorca 1-0 on Friday night in an instantly forgettable away game in the Basque capital Vitoria. Alaves should have had a man send off in the 11th minute when Kiki Garcia stamped on the back of Antonio Raillo’s ankle. It looked a bad one and could have been much worse for the Mallorca captain, who fortunately was able to continue with Garcia only being shown a yellow card.

The Alaves goalkeeper wasn’t put under any pressure at any time in the 93 minutes of play. Our Portuguese winger (on loan from Wolverhampton Wanderers), Chiquinho, made his first start for Mallorca and showed a few nice touches, but he was the only shining light in a poor Mallorca side. Alaves scored the only goal in the 76th minute when a terrible mix-up in the Mallorca six-yard box saw Martorell giving the ball away cheaply into the path of Alaves’s veteran midfielder Guridi, and he had a simple tap in, 1-0.

Not much else happened in the remaining playing time, as Mallorca now prepare for a huge test when they take on Atletico Madrid on Sunday week at 16:15 in the Son Moix. Our defeat on Friday night saw us miss out from taking joint third place in La Liga. On Friday night’s performance, any chance of that looked a long way off.

Many commentators were of the opinion that all games in La Liga should have been postponed this weekend after the terrible catastrophe in the Valencia region. That would have been a good decision for Mallorca as this was one of those games where they could have played all night and not scored.