Football Season Guide

Elche pulled off a minor miracle last season, managing to avoid relegation on the final day after a strong finish to the season. They hired Fran Escriba for the final weeks of the season, after a disastrous job had been done by the inexperienced Jorge Almiron to start the campaign. Escriba knows Elche well and turned things around. Elche still don’t have a particularly strong squad, though. The squad is more settled than this time last year, when they’d just came up through the promotion playoffs, but they still lack some star power and the signings made so far do little to fix that. They also have the oldest squad in the division, so that’s a concern too. With Escriba in charge, you know that Elche will be a solid and tough-to-break-down team, probably playing in a 4-4-2. That is enough to grind out results here and there, but they are expected to be battling down near the bottom of the table. A positive for Elche, though, is that their home support is usually very good and fans should be expected back in the stadiums this season, something they lacked in their first year back up. But, support alone won’t cut it. Elche probably do need another signing or two in order to compete with their relegation rivals.