Necessity
“For us there are no normal matches, and we cannot afford to make any mistakes. I don’t know what adjective to use, but what I do know is that we can’t speculate. We have to go for the game and win the points. We have a great necessity to maintain this level of hope that we still have”.
Deportivo de La Coruña
“What Cristóbal has shown is that he’s a coach who knows what he’s doing, and he’s not shaken by the high level that will be required from here until the end of the season. He is one of the many coaches from the Spanish school. A very good manager who is equipping his team with some good mechanisms. If we allow them to develop these mechanisms, they’ll do us some damage. We’ll try our best, spurred on by our necessity and ability, to ensure that won’t be the case”.
Dynamics
“After defeating Celta, we thought that things were going to change, yet the result wasn’t good against Villarreal. Out of all our away games, counting next week, we’ve faced Barça, Athletic, Valencia, Sevilla, Villarreal…the only one that appeared to play our league was Girona, and yet we lost. This shows that many things can happen. If any teams believe that because they’re in a better position than us that they’re not going to encounter any problems, then I think we’ll all have problems forever more. Our best example is last season. Look at the first round and then what happened in March, and how we had to play against Gijón. It’s something unexpected and unpredictable”.
VAR
“If VAR had been present in many of the matches, we wouldn’t have kicked-off the season losing. Who knows what would have happened next, but it’s certainly true that we would have been level on the scoreboard and not at a disadvantage. I think we’re taking our time with VAR. It’s all over Europe, yet our League, on paper, is the best in the world. We should have been a VAR pioneer. Every ounce of help and support in regard to arbitration is necessary and fundamental. That’s what technology is for, to assist the referees, who will continue to have a very tough task. We’re taking too long to implement it”.
Calendar and schedules
“It’s very difficult to devise the match calendar. We will be playing three games in six days next week (Real Madrid, Numancia and Levante), and over the following 17 days, will only be playing one game (Real Sociedad). I don’t know if it’s a problem to do with Mondays or Fridays, but it’s a problem that always seems to land at Málaga’s door. We’re not the only team not competing in Europe…we play many Monday games and at very different times”.
