It was always going to be tough for Athletic Club to cope with life after Ernesto Valverde, but their 16th-placed finish is much worse than expected.
Kuko Zigando, the former B team coach, was the man selected to replace the Barcelona-bound Valverde last summer and he didn’t have as much of an impact as was hoped. It’s also true, though, that he wasn’t helped much last summer, with Athletic Club signing zero players for their first-team squad.
On top of that, Athletic lost their best player Iker Muniain to a six-month knee injury in just the sixth week of the season after a decent start of two wins, two draws and two losses.
Without Muniain, and with their sole centre-forward Aritz Aduriz regularly suffering injuries too, Athletic struggled to score goals and it can hardly be much of a surprise that they scored the seventh fewest this season. They simply lacked the firepower up front to see off the opposition and drew so many matches, 13 in total, which was the joint most in the league.
To be fair to Ziganda, he tried to find a way to make Athletic effective and experimented with several different formations, even copying Girona’s 3-4-2-1 system towards the end of the campaign. But Athletic still struggled, partly as a result of Ziganda’s shortcomings, but also because this Athletic squad is in need of some fresh blood.
By signing centre-back Inigo Martinez at the end of January, Athletic have already taken a step towards renewing the squad, while they’re also set to sign Ander Capa and Dani Garcia from Eibar. Now they just need to find a coach to link it all together.
