The Leganes suffers from altitude sickness which, before the Oviedo, far from dissipating, was consolidated. And at the worst moment of the season. The match against the Carballones was on its way to being the duel of the year. A win at the Tartiere would have left Leganés three points behind Oviedo and cut the distance to the playoffs by one to five, which in that case, Las Palmas would have occupied. But none of that happened. Leganés fell and Oviedo (as well as the privilege zone) left up to nine points. Lost opportunity. One more time.
The still photo from a few days ago, after losing precisely in Las Palmas, revealed that Leganés had not managed to beat any of the teams in the upper middle zone of the table (from 12th to 1st classified) throughout the season, nor in the Garitano era, nor in the Nafti era. Taking the arrival of the French-Tunisian coach in Butarque as a reference, the data said that, against these teams, only 9 of 33 possible points had been garnered compared to 23 of 27 possible points against teams in the lower-middle zone of the table (from 13th to 22nd classified).
Two days have passed since then and the figures have varied until the phenomenon has grown to 9 out of 36 possible points against the top finishers and 27 out of 30 possible points against teams from the lower zone. It is true that, as a whim of the changes in the classification, some of the clubs that occupied the lower-middle zone of the table when that post-goleada photo was taken in Gran Canaria have now slipped into the top spot. Huesca or Zaragoza for example.
Punctures at key moments
Be that as it may, points up, points down, the statistics serve to slip a football hunch that indicates that, at key moments of the season for the good, to seek the playoff, Leganés sinks. Each game, of course, has had its circumstances. Controversies in Girona (3-0). Sometimes there was no option to reply, as happened against Valladolid (1-0). Others, fell with a crash, as happened in Burgos (4-0). Something similar, keeping the distance, happened against Las Palmas (4-2). In Oviedo he fell with a good image, but without success. Punctual matches in which something was always missing. The five defeats since the bench replacement occurred have been against teams from the top of the table.
It is true that in the other finals, those of salvation (don’t forget, Nafti’s first goal barely reached Butarque) the team has yielded 10, with excellent results that have ejected it from the well. But that’s it. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Hence Leganés has never been, already with the advanced course, less than six points away from the privilege zone that it had last Sunday before visiting the Tartiere. Bipolarity that has given him to achieve the complex objective of living in peace, but not to storm the top of the table, the true objective of the pepinero club at the start of the course.
However, there are still seven days to go in which the club, the squad and the coaching staff hope to give a positive version that will allow them to be at the top of the table, although the goal of the playoff it is almost ruled out, not only because of the mathematics of a large distance (nine points) but because between those privileged positions and the Lega there are also nine teams. The cabals to repeat promotion promotion are very complex.