Levante looked set for a relegation battle, but their decision to turn to B team coach Paco Lopez for the final 11 matches meant that they survived and that they survived comfortably.
The team that had won the second division last year started well under their promotion-winning coach Juan Muniz, as they went unbeaten across their first five matches, but they then won just one of their following 22 league games and were slipping towards the relegation zone, while they’d also been knocked out of the Copa del Rey at the second hurdle.
At that point, the board decided to take the bold decision of sacking the man who had brought them up to the division, but it now seems like a smart move. They promoted Paco Lopez as coach and he won eight of his 11 matches in charge, including a 5-4 win over Barcelona, which made Levante the only team to defeat the champions this season.
The key to Lopez’s success was that he adopted a slightly more attacking approach, playing a 4-4-2 in order to start two strikers up front and to make the most of the fact that Levante had signed four forwards in desperation during the January window.
With Lopez set to stay in charge of the club, they can now start planning for the upcoming season with some optimism. They do have a lot of players who were on loan and who are set to return to their parent clubs this summer, so there will be a need to recruit well and extensively.
