The key to staying in La Liga looked like finding 3 teams worse than Tenerife, the reality isn’t quite that simple, we still have to beat them. This was a shameful waste of 2 points against the bottom placed team, CDT were cruising at 2-0 up after half an hour but a sloppy, uninspired performance let Malaga back in.
It was quite a low key start to the game, Malaga looked poor with Portugese forward Edihno their only real threat, Sergio Aragoneses denied him after 15 minutes. Tenerife gradually got into their stride and Omar showed some great ball control to set up Roman for a 17th minute home lead. It got better barely 10 minutes later, Nino found Kome and his ball to Alfaro was gratefully fired into the Malaga net by the CDT forward.
That should have been the start of an easy romp, but it’s never easy for Tenerife fans, Malaga hit back straight away, Edinho exploting the CDT defence to pull a goal back. Aragoneses was kicking the goal post in anger and frustration at his defence, but he showed his own class a few minutes later, arching his body back to tip over a goal bound shot.
Into the second half and Tenerife really fell apart. Alfaro had a penalty claim turned down, he was tackled in the box and had a fair claim but made the most of his fall, and put doubts in the referees mind. Duda forced another save out of Sergio and Alfaro went close again at the other end, but there seemed a lack of urgency about Tenerife. They paid the price after 76 minutes when Sergio’s save came out to Lopez, who scored on his senior debut. It was a dismal ending for the 17,761 crowd, Nino looked poor again, near the end of the game he froze when the ball broke free in front of goal, and then fired a shot outside the Malaga post.
Tuesday night it’s home in the Copa del Rey 2nd round, with a 2-1 deficit to make up from the first leg, kick off 7pm. Internationals mean a blank weekend next week, but in 2 weeks time Sevilla are the visitors, at least it brings us a bit nearer to the January transfer window – reinforcements are definately needed.