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1-1: Control and draw
Espanyol didn’t lost the faith against Granada that scored first and defended their rent
The match between Granada and Espanyol gave us some details of what we can expect in the next games in this season. The two teams had many things to fight for. Granada, as in past years, tries to recover in the second half of the league. In the winter market they signed good players that have allowed them to improve the squad they already had. The truth is that the match during a few minutes was quite boring. Espanyol didn’t want to take any risk and the home team didn’t find the way to create opportunities. Therefore, the game changed when Barral left his team with ten players after being booked twice.
Espanyol spent most of the minutes without suffering or having problems and creating some opportunities. Gerard twice and Asensio later on, led us to believe that Espanyol was near to obtain their prize. The referee, who didn’t leave any of the two teams happy, ignored a clear aggression of Andrés Fernández to Hernán Pérez. A few minutes later, Javi López lost the ball and the boot after being fouled by Success but the referee didn’t punish the action and Rochina finished by scoring the first goal of the match.
The script of the second half seemed clear from the beginning. Granada was going to defend and close gaps, but without sacrificing the counterattack. With Rochina, El Arabi and Success they had enough to set up a counterattack and that would be applied.
Burgui had his option when the clock marked the minute 60. And a few seconds later, Alvaro, in a corner, headed the ball off goal.
The locals temporized the game as much as they could to try to extend the seconds and torpedoing every play based stumbled and obstacles. Espanyol fell into that kind of spider web for several minutes and failed to escape with the speed of other times. Their attempts were dying before an increasingly crowded local defense, as a shot from Mamadou between the defenders that Andrés sent a corner or another of Oscar Duarte narrowly escaped.
The ball was still hanging around the local goal and Hernán Pérez looking to put together a center to Gerard found Jorge Lopes’s leg Beraghi who introduced the ball into his own net.
This goal did justice to all-white rule and rewarded, at least, the effort of a team that was able to recover from the annoyances and allowed to take a valuable point of Granada.