La Liga starts today, and Mallorca will play its first game of the season tomorrow
Finally we're back in Primera, where we belong
As the 18th ranked club in La Liga's all time table, we will hopefully climb to 17th place, catching up with Oviedo, which is 27 points ahead and won't get any points this season since they are in Segunda... this would allow us to claim that our place is not only in Primera, but also outside the relegation zone
Well, onto more serious matters, hope we can avoid the drop, but it's going to be a huge challenge. Our budget is by far the smallest in Primera, and we've not been able to land many signings. The core of the team remains the same, and so far the only additions to our starting XI are going to be a Lumor, a LB on loan from portuguese club Sporting; Febas, a very promising midfielder that had a wonderful season in Segunda with Albacete; and Trajkovski, our biggest signing, a very solid winger that was released by Palermo after the Italian club was demoted due to financial irregularities. We've also secured the continuity of several key players (our striker Budimir, our CB Valjent, our DM Baba, etc) by extending their contracts and significantly raising their release clauses. Only our other starting CB, Raíllo, whose release clause is a mere 8 million, has yet to extend his contract... hopefully, he will do it soon.
The rest of the signings have been randoms that will either stay as bench players or be loaned out to Segunda. The majority of these players were signed only because the board never expected us to promote, and had already reached agreements with them around March-April. They are definitely good signings for Segunda, but they don't really seem to be Primera material.
Hopefully, we will be able to sign some more players during the remainder of the trasnfer window. Our manager's assistant has openly requested the club to sign at least two players with "experience in Primera", while the manager has said he will work with whatever the club provides him but admits it's going to be a very difficult challenge to compete with the rest of the teams if we don't strengthen the squad.
The other down side is that, while the other teams in Primer have had 3 months to rest, we only just promoted 7 weeks ago, due to the ridiculous length of Segunda's calendar (42 regular games plus 4 playoff games).
On the bright side, the dressing room has an amazing atmosphere. The players and manager are highly motivated and committed, and the fans are still euphoric, with the club selling all of the available season tickets just 3 hours after opening the offices. Hopefully this will help us, especially at home, and allow us to surprise everyone and avoid relegation.
Personally, I have faith in these boys... they've proven they can achieve the unexpected, and if we can land at least two good signings, we might just be able to pull through. While I believe that player by player we have the weakest team in the league, our spirit could make the difference.