Unai Emery and Pablo disappointed with Sociedad defeat

Valencia suffer their second home defeat

Valencia Coach Unai Emery and winger Pablo Hernandez both expressed their frustrations with the weekend defeat at the hands of Real Sociedad at the Mestalla. In a match Valencia played without their top scorer Roberto Soldado, who was suspended, they were short on ideas and creativity and the Mestalla crowd were left unhappy with the team’s display.

The match clearly indicated how much Valencia rely on Soldado and without him they lacked a real goal threat. Aritz Aduriz was given the responsibility of leading the line in the absence of Soldado, but he didn’t do enough to stake a claim for a regular place in the team.

But Emery’s decision to leave Jonas and Jordi Alba on the bench will also be questioned as Valencia went down to their second home defeat of the season.

In the post-match press conference, Emery admitted Valencia were ‘dull’.  He said: “We played a bad game. We have been dull except for the first quarter of an hour.”

“We did not manage to find a way past [Claudio Bravo], but we lost a very even match.”

Pablo Hernandez also spoke after the game, the winger wanted to apologise to the fans for the poor performance. He said: ”It was one of the worst performances of the season. We have to understand the fans’ anger.”

”This defeat is a shame because it was a very important match, it was the penultimate match in the first round of fixtures and we lost an opportunity to add to our points tally and distance ourselves from those teams below us and also close the gap on the top two.”

Speaking about the reasons for the defeat, Pablo said: ”We failed to control the ball with the same speed and depth that we usually do. All we can do is learn from these mistakes and try to correct them in the cup match we have next, which is important for us.”

Valencia don’t have much time to dwell on the defeat, they return to action on Thursday in the Copa Del Rey quarter-final against local rivals Levante at the Mestalla. A win in the derby will be the perfect way for the team to lift the mood of their fans.