Real Mallorca's goal drought continues and they've now gone ten and a half hours without scoring a league goal from open play after their second consecutive 0-0 draw in three days. It was another stalemate encounter, this time against UCAM Murcia on Sunday night.
Murcia let us off the hook. They hit the post, missed at least three scoreable chances and made our goalkeeper Santamaria pull off a wonder save: the visitors had only five goal attempts and fluffed them all.
Our second game of the season saw Oscar Diaz score away against Cadiz at 22:36 pm on Sunday 2 August. Since then our wearer of the number nine shirt has failed to hit the target and was booed off the pitch when he was substituted on Sunday.
We've quickly turned into a team of minimums: least goals scored in the league (two) and the least conceded (three). We've now drawn four, won just one and lost two, giving us a pretty abysmal seven points from a possible 21. When Fernando Vazquez got Deportivo promoted in 2014 as runners up, they only scored 48 goals and had the second best goals against tally - 36. In that promotion campaign, Deportivo had ten 0-0 draws and eight 1-0s, proving that, as is happening here at the moment, the coach is sending out teams not to lose, which means the entertainment value is not good. At home he should be throwing caution to the wind and going with an all-out attacking formation.
Only in the last ten minutes when it was way too late did Vazquez make changes. We have no cutting edge inside the penalty area and two goals in seven games simply isn't good enough with the money that's been invested in Real Mallorca football club. Our American owners' patience must, even this early in the season, be wearing thin. Football at any professional level is a results business and at the moment they are simply not forthcoming. On Sunday night's showing, it doesn't look likely we're going to pick an all-elusive win for some time.
Summing up: Yes 0-0 again. Scarcely believable really but, as I said, that's now two successive goalless draws we've played and three all season. We haven't seen the net bulge from open play since Cadiz. Again, more opportunities were created that gave us a few moments of excitement but we simply fall to pieces inside the penalty box. The lack of a genuine goal-scoring centre forward has never been so blatantly obvious. However, the improvement in our defence is unmistakable.
As expected, the local football media were having a field day. They too questioned the continuation of Vazquez. It's all very well at press conferences bleating on about winning a point and the fact we've had to play three games in a week and we spent all day on Friday travelling back from Tenerife. The fans don't care, they want to see us score as many goals as possible. The possibility of Vazquez leaving seems remote unless our form gets any worse. At least at the moment we're out of the relegation zone.
The highlight of the game came five minutes from time when a promising move by Mallorca saw an effort from Juan Dominguez brilliantly stopped by a reflex save from Murcia's Mallorca-born 'keeper Biel Ribas. The bottom line is that Real Mallorca haven't done their homework and signed any kind of quality striker in the summer, giving us fans palpitations and not a lot of hope at the moment. The thought of another troubled season looms on the horizon.