Celta Vigo captain Borja Oubina believes his team faces a tough season on their return to the top flight after a five-year absence.
“It will be a difficult year because we have just had two very good seasons, when we won almost every week, and now everybody must realise that it will be impossible to repeat.
“We have to get used to it and be strong because there will be difficult months ahead when we must not drop our heads,” he told Mundo Deportivo.
The 30-year-old defensive midfielder, who has spent his entire career with the Galicians apart from an injury-ravaged loan spell with Birmingham City in the 2007-08 season, is one of the few players in Paco Herrera’s squad with Primera experience, and he took the opportunity to send a message to the supporters.
“The fans have to understand that there will be no easy games and we will be unable to dominate opponents as we have done in the last two years,” he explained.
“If we don’t focus on that then things could go wrong. In La Primera there is more quality, more intensity in the speed of the ball and we will need to defend much better.”
However, Borja does feel that Celta will have an advantage in that they have kept the same squad together over the last two campaigns, although he acknowledged that if the Coach wants the team to play a different way ´then we will have work more on that`.
Although boss Herrera said this week that Celta’s objective would be to secure top-flight safety with five or six games remaining, and ‘without stress`, Oubina reckons it could be a little more problematic.
“What the boss said would be ideal, but to do that is going to be very difficult.
“It will be a season where we will go through a lot and we’ll hope to receive as much support as possible, because the atmosphere will be very important, but the minimum requirement is to be better than at least three other teams.”
