Athletic Club de Bilbao will be playing European football next season, but only because of the result of the Copa del Rey final, which – luckily for Athletic – added an extra Europe League spot onto the league table. They had finished seventh and would otherwise have missed out on European football. 2016/17 was, then, a slightly disappointing season for Athletic, who finished lower than they had done the year before and who also crashed out of the Europa League at the round of 32 and of the Copa del Rey at the last 16 stage.
One of the main reasons for their struggles this year was just how poor they were away from home. While they boasted the fifth best home record of all La Liga teams, they were just 10th in terms of points earned away from San Mames, which ultimately cost them. Another issue for the team was that Aritz Aduriz understandably struggled to replicate his sensational 2015/16 goalscoring return. He’d netted 36 times that year, but in 2016/17 he could ‘only’ score 24, which saw Athletic drop a few more points. The fact that Raul Garcia was the only other player to reach double figures in terms of La Liga goals, scoring exactly 10, meant that the goalscoring burden was all on Aduriz and when the 36-year-old couldn’t come up with the goods, Athletic usually struggled. A lot had been expected of Inaki Williams and he once again showed glimpses of just how special a talent he is, but his return of five league goals has to go down as disappointing, as many expected him to add goalscoring to his game this year.
