David Gallego never tires of repeating every week that his only concern is what is immediate, the next game, but the truth is that Sporting and its fans look at the calendar in the short and medium term, specifically, this time to the next two days as they are considered key to the future of the team this season.
The duels against Valladolid and Eibar –third and leader of the category, respectively– will serve to clarify the goal of the Gijon team this season. How Sporting comes out of these two games will depend on whether they can keep dreaming of getting into the final fight for promotion or, on the contrary, they will have to try to reach the necessary points as soon as possible to achieve permanence.
The Sporting of the league have been generating doubts since they entered a bad run of results that led them to chain ten consecutive days without winning. However, the end of last year and the beginning of 2022 have changed the dynamic to the point that the team from Gijón is the sixth best in the category in the last five days, those that have passed since the triumph in Ibiza (December 18) until last Sunday’s victory in El Molinón against Amorebieta. Five games without losing having added nine points out of a possible 15.
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*Data updated as of January 25, 2022
“It is true that we had not won for three months but It is also true that we had nine or ten games that the team did not lose”, Gallego recalled after the last game, including in that analysis the last three games of the Copa del Rey against Alcorcón (2-1), Villarreal (2-1) and Cádiz (0-0), which add up to eight games without defeat. “Depending on how we want to see the situation, we value it one way or another,” he added.
But the reality is that Sporting he has only got 11 points out of the last 42 played, in a phase of the competition full of casualties and setbacks –everything must be taken into account–; his game in the league competition is far from the best version, the one offered in the Copa del Rey, for example. Now two candidates for promotion have arrived, such as Valladolid and Eibar, both at a good time to test and measure the true potential of David Gallego’s team.