Football Season Guide

Granada secured promotion into LaLiga last season by finishing second in the division. It was their first year with Diego Martinez as coach and it worked perfectly. Granada’s main aim in the summer was to keep the best players in their squad together. There were some talents like Fede San Emeterio, Jose Antonio Martinez and Alejandro Pozo who they couldn’t help but lose because they were on loan from other clubs, but largely they did manage to keep the band together. When it came to signing players, they went out and brought in some quality in every position, with veteran Spanish striker Roberto Soldado coming in to bolster the attack, Yangel Herrera arriving to make central midfield more solid, Darwin Machis coming to add another experienced option on the wing and Domingos Duarte being signed to improve the centre-back contingent. For most outside observers, Granada are probably the least exciting of the newly promoted clubs, but the reality is that they’ve done a decent job this summer. Of course, it’ll be difficult because they don’t have budgets of other clubs, but they’ve done about as well as they could. As is the case with all newly promoted clubs, their strength will be their momentum. This is a winning team and they’ll hope to take that mentality into this tougher division. In terms of weaknesses, there’s the fact that their budget is simply much smaller than other teams. Apart from that, they could really do with another left-back.