Real Mallorca failed to win a fifth consecutive league game in a match in which they didn’t have one proper shot on goal and showed that they were totally bereft of creating any clear-cut chances and now haven’t beaten Osasuna in the Son Moix since 2010. We started the game brilliantly and things were looking good, but after 10 minutes our heads dropped, we sat back and looked feeble in our few forays forward. Once again Kang In Lee pulled the strings and played a crucial role in midfield. He curled a free kick just past the post early doors before demonstrating some brilliant skills to start a promising attack that, like most of the others, petered out long before it reached the penalty area.
Osasuna had an eye on Tuesday’s cup-tie semi-final second leg against At. Bilbao and looked for the most part to be quite happy with a point. They also offered very little coming forward so neither goal keeper had much to do until the last five minutes when Mallorca ’keeper Rajkovic made two super saves to keep us in the game.
Some of our tackling verged on the dangerous side and seven yellow cards were shown from another incompetent referee Diaz De Mera, who’s had previous form in denying Mallorca some clear cut decisions. Over 40 fouls were committed in the game and I can’t remember a match when we were shown so many cards. A lot of the infringements were caused purely and simply by frustration.
Neither side mustered any quality in this game (with the exception of Kang In Lee) and you could see why both have scored so few goals this season. It was no surprise after 95 minutes that the game limped to a goal-less stalemate. With the next two games away and the fact that we haven’t won on the road since the return from the World Cup, there is, at the moment, not a lot of optimism about.
Mallorca have only won two points in the last 15 games and coach Aguirre, who sat this game out in the stand serving a suspension, has a lot of work to do on the Son Bibiloni training pitch to get RCD Mallorca back to winning ways. They’ll have to play their next game away at Valladolid on Sunday at 2pm without Copete, Gio Gonzalez and Baba. I felt sorry for Muriqi whose form has dipped alarmingly of late, basically because he doesn’t get the service he requires. He left the pitch near the end and was furious to be substituted. His contribution was mostly in defence, which most certainly is not his normal position. He and Kang In Lee are by some distance our best two outfield players and once again Pedrag Rajkovic kept a clean sheet. Kang In Lee left the pitch in the 70th minute exhausted after his long trek back from South Korea. There’s no doubt this young man is class as once again dozens of his countrymen and women were at the game, and I’ll be very surprised if he’ll be here next season.
A ten-man Mallorca hung on for a point as we wait to see how many of the chasing pack will catch us up and overtake us in La Liga classifications this weekend.
SUMMING UP : What a malarkey this was, a truly terrible game summed up by a frustrated fan on social media with one word – LAMENTABLE !
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No shots on goal makes us sound better than we actually were. I'm just surprised we didn't put a couple in our own net!