Football Season Guide

Osasuna

In


Adrian Lopez (att) Porto; Ezequiel Avila (att) San Lorenzo; Marc Cardona (att) Barcelona; Facundo Roncaglia (def) Celta Vigo; Darko Brasanac (mid) Real Betis; Antonio Otegui (att) Melilla

Out


Carlos Clerc (r) (def); Robert Ibanez (r) (mid) Getafe; Miguel Olavide (sp) (mid) Released; Xisco (sp) (att) Released

Osasuna are the champions of the second division and are back in LaLiga. They had a wonderful 2018/19 campaign, in their first year with Jagoba Arrasate coach. Osasuna’s aim this summer has been to keep the squad together as much as possible and to also inject some LaLiga experience. They managed to sign some of last year’s star loanees like Brandon and Ruben Garcia to permanent deals. Then, when you look at who’ve they’ve brought in you see that four of the six new faces were playing in LaLiga last season, while there’s also Adrian Lopez who has arrived from Porto but who has played hundreds of LaLiga games over his career and who won the competition with Atletico Madrid back in the day. This squad, then, looks excellent. It’s a mix of the players who got the team promoted and some new arrivals with top-flight experience. Add all of this to the fact that Osasuna are so strong at home and you have a really strong team. Last year they won 19 and drew two of their 21 home games, conceding just seven goals in front of their home fans. So they’ll be in a good position if they can make El Sadar a fortress again. There aren’t many weaknesses with this Osasuna team, apart from the obvious fact that they have one of the league’s smallest budgets and can’t afford the talent of some other clubs.

Target


Avoiding relegation. Osasuna look stronger than most newly promoted sides do when they come up. However, their goal for this season will logically be to simply stay up.