Espanyol finished up in eighth, their best La Liga position in seven years, but at one point it looked like new coach Quique Sanchez Flores would be losing his job. The team started slowly and were in the relegation zone after seven weeks, while they didn’t break into the top half of the table until the 15th round of action. They finished very strongly, though, and managed to reach eighth in the final weekend of the season.
The 2016/17 season was, therefore, an encouraging one for Espanyol fans and for their new Chinese owners, who are desperate for Champions League football. This was a big step forward, compared to last year’s 13th place finish, so a Europe League spot can now be a realistic target for the 2017/18 campaign. Luckily they’ll still have Pablo Piatti as they target European football, given that he was their star man this season. In total, Espanyol scored 49 goals, so the fact that Piatti netted 10 and assisted 11 means that he was directly involved in 43% of the team’s goals. It was crucial that they had such a creative talent, given that this team was primarily concerned with defence and with keeping the opposition out. Sanchez Flores constructed a tough-to-break-down 4-4-2 system, one which conceded the eighth fewest goals. With 50 going past Espanyol this season, that was 24 fewer than they had conceded the previous year, when they’d had the very worst defence. The arrival of former Real Madrid goalkeeper Diego Lopez was a major reason for that, as he immediately improved this team when he strapped on the goalkeeping gloves and stepped out onto the pitch.
