Football Season Guide

Real Betis are coming off a very poor campaign. Given how strong a squad they had built, they had ambitions of qualifying for Europe last season, but finished 15th and ended the season really poorly. The poor season saw coach Rubi sacked before the campaign had even been completed. Then, in the summer, Real Betis went out and signed Manuel Pellegrini to take over as coach. This is viewed as a major coup, since he has vast experience of coaching abroad in addition to his decade of experience coaching in LaLiga. The squad hasn’t been shaken up too much, but Real Betis have made changes at the centre-back position as this was an area of weakness last year. Victor Ruiz comes in and should shore up the defence. Similarly, they’ve brought in Claudio Bravo to potentially take the No.1 spot from Joel Robles, who performed poorly in goals last season. The main strength of this Real Betis team is their ability to keep the ball and to dominate possession, but the weakness is the fact that they so often struggle to turn this into chances. Teams sit deep against them and let them have the ball, so Pellegrini will need to be creative to solve this and to get his strikers firing.