Game of the season: Villarreal visit Palma de Mallorca

Fill us in on the basics. How has 2011/2012 been for Villarreal?

Villarreal had an unbelievably bad first half of this season, and it all started in the summer.  Everyone expected Giuseppe Rossi to be sold to Barcelona, but they went for Alexis Sanchez instead.  It seemed pretty clear Sr. Roig had decided to sell a player for big money in order to have funds to strengthen the squad depth, which was a problem last year.  Unfortunately, while the sale of Santi Cazorla to Málaga brought in some money, it wasn’t invested well – or at least the players bought with it haven’t added much to the team as yet.

The Champions League draw put us in an incredibly difficult group with virtually no chance to get out of the group stage, and to make matters worse we had lots of injuries: Nilmar, Rossi, etc., so that was a disaster too.

Juan Carlos Garrido certainly fell from grace. What was the back story there and how have the fans taken to new Head Coach José Francisco Molina?

Garrido alienated a lot of the fanbase through the lack of attractive play, plus his refusal to acknowledge we were in trouble.  It seemed like every press conference he said we were getting better and ‘deserved more’, and it was hard sometimes to know what game he was seeing.  The Copa loss at home to Mirandés, where the team pretty much rolled over, finally made Sr. Roig pull the plug, even though it cost several million €’s to buy out Garrido’s contract.

Molina was viewed as a cheap hire, and a dangerous one given his lack of experience, but so far his change of style has been exactly what we needed.  The players are happier and more relaxed, and Molina has gone back to the sort of free-flowing possession game that is fun to watch.  The fans are responding positively to all this, but at the same time are still somewhat apprehensive given where we are in the table and how bunched so many teams are.

How is the financial position at El Madrigal?

The Spanish economic crisis has gone on long enough that pretty much everyone except for the big two are struggling, I think.  Certainly attendances have been down for us this year, and for the first time in memory the players were asked their permission to be paid late (I should note that unlike everyone else in the league, Villarreal pays its players in equal monthly installments, not two bigger payments in August and June and smaller sums in other months).  We felt this was probably in case we needed to spend more money during the January transfer window, which didn’t happen.  It did look like we were going to sell Nilmar, but in the end that didn’t happen either.  As far as I know everything is back to ‘normal’ on the money front, but money is certainly tight.

And finally, we have to ask. Following the transfer of our key player Jonathan de Guzmán in the summer, how has he been getting on and how have the fans taken to him?

To say the least, he’s struggled to adapt to Villarreal so far.  Part of it is language, because he doesn’t speak Spanish well, and Villarreal is a far less cosmopolitan place than Mallorca (Rossi being away from the team doing rehab hasn’t helped, either).  But the other problem is Garrido was the guy that wanted him, and now he’s gone.  Molina stresses quick ball movement and ball recovery, and deGuz is happier dribbling in space and isn’t a tackler (at least we haven’t seen evidence of it).  He really hasn’t played since Molina took over, so I wouldn’t expect you’ll see him this Sunday.

How have the fans reacted to him?  When he played, he was a lightning rod for some of the anti-Garrido critics. He did score a nice goal in the CL against Bayern Munich and I think many fans realised they were being unfair to the guy, but Molina brought an attacking midfielder up from the B team (Gonzalo Castellani) who is seeing minutes ahead of deGuz, and we only have one game a week now.  He’s a nice guy, we had a nice interview with him on one of our podcasts, so I hope things work out for him here.

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