An Espanyol of two halves

Mauricio Pochettino acknowledges the difficulty he faces in turning around Espanyol’s season, as he fails to understand their second-half collapse.

Los Periquitos had led at Levante by two goals to nil at the break, only to collapse to a 3-2 defeat, thanks in the end to a last minute own goal.

“These are difficult times – three games with defeat and that is beyond my worst start, it must be analysed,” reflected Pochettino post match.

“It’s hard to tell what happened, I can only think that after a great half, the team backed off after five yellow cards and the conditions of the second half, but there is no dodgy the responsibility for the defeat.

“The team lacked intensity of the first half. I do not like to talk about this, but in the first three days of the season we have not had much luck with the refereeing decisions.

“Here, within 10 minutes [of the second half] we lost the game. After their first goal, we failed to organise ourselves.

“Levante went out and pushed for it at 2-2, the game was more set for a draw than a defeat, but again in injury time it got away from us.

“One is not calm about this, the responsibility is great and it is clear. We will have to change some aspects and they must be corrected, because it cannot be such a radical change from the first to second half.”