Football Season Guide

The 4th of June 2016 will be remembered as a famous date in the history of Club Deportivo Leganes. A 0-1 away win at Mirandes sealed promotion for the diminutive club from the outskirts of Madrid for the first time in their 88 year history. Asier Garitano’s side eventually finished a point behind Alaves in the Segunda Division standings, earning automatic promotion as runners-up in Spanish football’s second tier. Like Eibar two years before them, Leganes will arrive in La Liga as overwhelming underdogs. If they can match the feat of their Basque forerunners by staying up, it will be a momentous achievement for a club with an 8,000 capacity stadium. Unfortunately we won’t see the Pepineros pitted against their closest rivals to the south of the Spanish capital, Getafe; the Azulones were relegated in May, thus ending a 12 year stint in the Primera Division. Leganes showed in La Segunda last season that they are a solid defensive unit and can achieve positive results even when the balance of play is not in their favour. Repeating that resilience in the Primera Division will be a different matter and we’ll only really have a good idea of their potential after the first few rounds of fixtures. What isn’t in doubt is that the club’s board has worked tirelessly to give Garitano’s team the best possible chance of staying up. For a club of their size, they have done some excellent work in the transfer market. First and foremost, they have secured the continuance of Pablo Insua, Gabriel Pires and Unai Bustinza, who were crucial cogs in the machinery of their promotion campaign. They have also brought in fresh quality in the form of Miguel Guerrero, Adrian Marin, Unai Lopez, Carlos Medjani and Alberto Brignoli, so Leganes look stronger on paper than they did last term, which is obviously important given the step up in quality. The star of the team could be Alexander Szymanowski, who was marvellous in 2015-16, scoring 12 and assisting 11 goals to steer Leganes towards the top flight. He will have competition for the limelight in Gabriel Pires, whom Leganes have paid a million euros to sign permanently after his impressive showing last term. We should keep an eye out on loanee Adrian Marin, who has represented Spain in the inferior categories and was on the fringes of the Villarreal first team; he has a big future at left back and, like Bustinza, could arrive to disrupt the regular starting back line from last season.