Real Mallorca at Lluc monastery. | PERE BOTA

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Real Mallorca, who are struggling big time to score goals, have bottom club Huesca as Son Moix visitors on Saturday. They knocked us out of the Cup three weeks ago and have in their goal a true Mallorca legend, Leo Franco, who played for us in the Champions League, UEFA cup and was a member of our 2003 cup-winning team.

Mallorca have played six competitive games and have only scored two goals, one of them a penalty, and we are currently the worst goals-for team in La Segunda. It’s high time we started bulging that net, as at present goals have completely dried up.

It looks like young Brandon Thomas will again miss out through injury, but apart from him everybody else is fit and raring to go. Real Mallorca’s playing and coaching staff visited Lluc monastery on Wednesday for their annual team photo shoot and it sounded like president/owner Utz Claassen had received some divine inspiration from the Almighty.

He was quoted as saying if we scored five goals against Huesca (let’s hope so), he would do the walk to Lluc. And if we go up to La Liga as well, he’ll do it twice; Ferrer joked that he’d do it but on his bike, on which he could well be soon.

With the media closing in on the coach, doubting his capabilities, Claassen has given him the dreaded (kiss of death) vote of confidence. He’s said it’s taking time for the 15 new players signed in the summer to gel. Claassen’s faith in the ability of Ferrer hasn’t wavered one iota (the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet, by the way) and expects things to turn around starting on Saturday.

However, a defeat or a draw will hasten more doubts about Ferrer’s capabilities (from the fan base at least) and test his ability to live with the excessively ambitious promotion hype of Utz Claassen which, on our present form, is hard to take on board.
Our next two games could well define Chapi’s future. Next week it’s Oviedo away (a trip I’m hoping to make) then bottom club Llagostera are here in Palma on Sunday, 11 October at 5 pm. The next home game after that is scheduled for Sunday, 25 October when we face one of the promotion contenders Almeria at 12 midday.


In other news, work on building the new north “Luis Sitjar” stand is well underway. It’s to comprise eleven rows with a capacity of 1,512 and will be functional in time for our home game against Albacete on 6 December. It’s hoped that the stand will be full, especially when season ticket sales have reached 10,000. Now all we need is an improvement on the pitch which will see Real Mallorca storm up the table.