Saturday evening’s kick-off saw an intriguing clash between two of last season’s rising clubs in the league, as Girona travelled to the Mestalla.

Safe to say, Marcelino’s Valencia are yet to find their feet this season – their midweek win in the Copa del Rey against Ebro was only their second of the season, having drawn 10 of their previous 13 games in all competitions. Mostly, it seems to have been a case of them not finding the back of the net frequently enough. Ebro was only the second game in which Valencia managed to score twice in a match this season. For a team that barely needed a site at goal for them to score last season, is it really a systemic issue or is it just a matter of poor finishing?

Girona have incurred a similarly treacherous path of form under new manger Eusebio Sacristán. They sat three places ahead of Valencia prior to this and were yet to lose an away game this season (winning 1 and drawing the other 4).

Lineups

Girona’s alternating 3-4-3 struggles against Valencia’s defence

Sacristán’s side had many alterations to their shape in possession but the most common setup was a 3-4-3.

When playing out from their own third, they would look to draw in Gonçalo Guedes down the right, play into Pedro Porro and then back into Aleix Garcia. However, this passage of play was easily read by Valencia and their aggressive press dealt with the threat as Girona failed to find a way into Patrick Roberts down the same side.

The visitors had more slightly success across the pitch. At least that was the case in the middle third. One of the rotations Girona commonly performed was to have Borja García drop from his inside forward position to become one of a midfield three. At that point, Aleix Garcia, on the far-side would push up slightly as Roberts stayed high and wide, in line with Porro, on the right to provide a better out ball once it’d been worked back across. The wide attacker would then move inside to open the space for Porro to receive in, meaning José Gayà couldn’t move out to press the wing-back.

Aleix Garcia didn’t only push up when this specific rotation happened, though. For more of the latter stages of the first half, he moved directly ahead of Pere Pons. Here, he could swap in and out of vacant positions whilst offering greater support just in behind the forwards.

One of the moves he might’ve been best equipped to help progress in was through Carles Planas. Girona were afforded a little more spacing playing back into the centre from the left-wing-back. When he had the ball, Borja would actively move away from him, inside, as the defender drilled passes into the centre, just in front of Valencia’s defensive line. Usually quite accurate with these, they could attack through the centre from here as the home side had to commit a few fouls in fairly dangerous areas to relinquish the threat.

Despite being somewhat overrun numerically in the centre, the hosts always looked pretty comfortable dealing with Girona’s threat. Their pressing in wide areas was especially good and they rarely let the away side reach the final third. This was the case all throughout the game as Sacristán’s men barely got a sniff at goal.

Valencia’s on-the-ball approach results in very few breakthroughs

Forced to play slightly deeper in possession in the first half, the hosts were quite predictable in their attempts to breakdown their opponents.

For good periods of the first half, Valencia were simply rotating the ball between their double pivot of Francis Coquelin and Geoffrey Kondogbia, looking to play direct into the centre into Rodrigo Moreno, who’d popped up just in front of Santi Mina. However, against Girona’s compact 5-4-1, this was easily read and cut out. In wide areas, they also had little success as Girona’s wing-backs and wide-midfielders tracked their respective players’ positioning and movements well.

Switching to the more isolated left is how they managed to work some more space. Since Valencia usually recycled play nearer to the right, it meant that switching into Guedes and Gayà posed more of a threat to that side. And, since their mid-block remained quite zonal, there was a fair amount of space for the wide left attackers to work with, at least temporarily.

Even in situations where Girona were deeper and had shifted to cover that side, they were still having a hard time dealing with Gayà’s underlapping and overlapping runs.

Even though most of these runs seemed like a ploy where there could be no access into the full-back, there always seemed to be a way. Jonas Ramalho never got tight enough to the Spaniard, so Valencia frequently reached the last line and thus found themselves in good crossing positions. Despite this, Girona dealt with these crosses comfortably enough.

In fact, both sides’ general possession approaches were almost entirely ineffective. What led to some of the bigger breakthroughs for Valencia in the first half was Girona’s defensive lapses in concentration. Slow in pushing up with the defensive line, Porro’s deeper position enabled Carlos Soler’s run to be played onside as his cross to the back post led to two big chances from point blank range for Guedes and Santi Mina. The first shot right at the feet of Bono, whilst the second was a much less controlled shot that clipped the bar and went out.

Away from that chance, Bono, by some miracle, managed to save this headed effort from Rodrigo on a free kick. Tthe home side didn’t create much else.

Valencia control the second half but Girona make their chance count

Something that Girona had occasionally done throughout the game was press in a 3-5-2. Especially when play revolved around Valencia’s right side, Roberts would step up alongside Doumbia to try and cut off access into the far-sided centre-back. And it was through this that the visitors managed to take a surprise lead.

Just three minutes into the second period, the winger pushed up and pounced on a poor backwards pass from Kondogbia. He jinxed away from one before taking on a shot from a tight angle which was then tucked home by Pere Pons, through the legs of Gayà, on the rebound. Totally against the run of play, Sacristán’s side were happy to try and see out the half deep in their own third as Marcelino’s men then took full control of the ball.

From here, it was a relentless pelting of the box from Valencia. Even in the now more congested areas, Guedes and Gayà were still linking well but the resulting crosses were also still being comfortably deal with by the opposition’s defence.

With Girona retreating deeper and deeper, the angles of crosses were varying too. Daniel Wass and Soler were able to work angled crosses in from deeper but that only led to one half chance from a Mina header that was saved easily enough by Bono.

The one apporach which did find growing success was feeding it into Rodrigo like in the first half. More because now it could come from wider angles. Even with the lanes into the strikers even tighter now than they were before, once it got to them, the risk of a loose ball caused greater problems. And that’s exactly what almost cost them.

Soler fed it through the narrowest of gaps into Santi Mina, as the ball bounced off the leg of Bernardo and behind him. Rodrigo was there to pounce on the loose ball but he was selfish in taking his shot when Santi Mina was available for the cutback. Another chance wasted.

Marcelino was now piling on the strikers, with all four of Rodrigo, Santi Mina, Michy Batshuayi and Kévin Gameiro on the pitch. Guedes and Ferran Torres patrolled the flanks as Valencia brought their crossing total up to 39, with only 12 being successful.

Batshuayi did however get on the end of a cutback that saw his shot go narrowly wide of the far post after another lapse in concentration from Girona’s defence, but that was all that could be said for the final minutes of the match.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that Valencia aren’t best equipped to be the side to breakdown deep blocks, but as their status as a bigger team grows, it’s a challenge they will continue to face.

Here, they were the better team and deserved to win but their finishing, once again, let them down. The main issue with this performance for Marcelino will be that their chances came from relatively nothing. Their best forms of attack didn’t provide much in the way of dangerous openings, and, had it not been for these lapses in concentration from the away side, it might well have been a deserved point for Girona.

In spite of the chances conceded, a win at the Mestalla, in any context, is very impressive. Even with a much-weakened strike force, as both of Cristian Portu and Cristhian Stuani were absent, it was a big test that they narrowly managed to pass. With huge thanks to goalkeeper Bono, of course. They keep up their excellent away record and climb higher up the table.