La Liga Defender Club Review – Alavés

With another La Liga season now in the history books, we will be looking at each club’s performance in the EuroFantasyLeague game. That roundup starts right here with Alavés, who had a decent campaign, finishing ninth in the Spanish top flight.

That was under the guidance of former Babazorros defender Mauricio Pellegrino, who recently departed the hotseat. Pellegrino certainly had a better time of things as manager at the club than he did as a player – he made 13 appearances before retiring in 2006, returning as boss a decade later.

This season saw Alavés reach the final of the Copa Del Ray for the first time in their history, though they lost 3-1 to Barcelona to award the Catalans the trophy.

Under Pellegrino’s tutelage the club have certainly proven capable of building strong counter attacks, but their vulnerabilities at the back – particularly from set-pieces – have let them down at times.

With that said, we will now take the opportunity to examine the defenders who have represented the club on-field the most this season.

Theo Hernández has been a familiar face at the back throughout the campaign. 30 starts (with two sub appearances) have yielded 38 points for any fantasy managers who chose to move him into their side, which was approximately 1% of players. One goal scored and three assists have aided that tally greatly, and with a value of 6.00m he finished the season with a Performance / Price (P/P) ratio of 7.2. It could have been higher were it not for his disciplinary record, which ended up at 11 yellow cards and one red. Despite this, that’s not a bad return at all!

Zouhair Feddal wasn’t far behind him at all with 36 points earned from 27 starts, and he was arguably the star of the defence. He managed two goals and a single assist, and he enjoyed considerably fewer bookings than Hernández. Feddal only went into the referee’s book six times all season, but did see red twice which dragged his score down a bit. Taking all of that into account, along with his tempting 4.50m valuation, his P/P ratio ended up at an impressive 8.4.

Víctor Laguardia kept within arm’s reach of Feddal with 32 points, matching the latter’s yellow total of six but without any reds. He also scored twice and set one up, but his problem was his valuation. At 7.00m, he was the most expensive Alavés defender in the game. That resulted in a P/P ratio of only 3.1. On a brighter note, though, he managed those 32 points from only 26 appearances – 24 of them starts, so it really could have been a worse outing for the former Spain U21 international.

Alexis Delgado was a fair way behind on 21 points from his 24 appearances. Five of those were as a sub. Nine yellows and a red contributed to his lower tally, but two goals helped his cause. With a valuation of only 2.50m (a fair price considering he only managed 19 starts), that did result in a hugely impressive P/P score of 8.0.

Rounding off the defenders for the club this season were Vigaray (19 appearances, 15 points, P/P of 5.7), Rodrigo Ely (10 appearances, 13 points, P/P of 4.0) and Raúl García (18 appearances, seven points, P/P of 1.2).

With the club now seeking a new manager to replace Pellegrino it seems difficult to make too many suggestions on how they may go about improving their defence in the summer. It does largely depend of course on the identity of the new manager, the calibre of player he can attract and indeed his own philosophies. A primary suggestion would of course be a physically fit, consistent presence at the back who can approach a situation calmly and keep his disciplinary points down.

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