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0-3: Convincing

Espanyol showed patience to beat Albacete in an intense and consistent match over many periods

Espanyol arrived at the Carlos Belmonte stadium with a clear idea that they mustn't go into the match being over confident. Vicente Moreno had repeated it time after time: don’t look at the league table, roll up our sleeves and work hard against a rival that has fewer and fewer options to make it out of the bottom rankings in the remaining matches of the season. No sooner said than done. Premonitory. The match expected was untidy, hard going, complicated to play without many spaces and with an Albacete side that bravely defended every metre with intensity.

Espanyol took a while to settle into this situation, but the players threatened the area each time they found a gap in the Albacete defence. The first attempt came from RDT who controlled a long ball played forward by Keidi. His shot was stopped by Tomeu Nadal who came off his line to put pressure on the attacking forward and narrowed the angle. A previous move by Puado went astray and another white and blue attack ended with the ball bouncing in front of Embarba. Tomeu Nadal brought him down as he approached the goal. Penalty. It wasn’t even contested. RDT took responsibility and put Espanyol in front.

After half-time, Espanyol took more and more control of the match, keeping possession of the ball and aggressively attacking whenever possible, looking for a way to seal the match as soon as they could. Calero scored the second goal from a corner, which decided the match. There were still many minutes to go, but there was still a feeling on the pitch that the white and blues would dominate the match in which Óscar Gil had to come off due to a shoulder injury. The young B team player, Omar, kept a cool head and didn’t let the pressure get the better of him. The third goal, scored by RDT again, resulted in sealing the fourth victory in a row during this final stretch of the season and adds to the tenth consecutive match without a loss.