Bernd Schuster has reflected that Malaga will ‘never give up’ despite a difficult start to the season compounded by defeat on Monday to Athletic Bilbao.
The Anchovies saw their Basque visitors leave La Rosaleda in Week 14’s closing fixture with maximum points, as Mikel San Jose and Iker Muniain’s second-half efforts cancelled out Juanmi’s opener.
“We didn’t deserve to lose this game at all. I think we did enough to win tonight, but these things happen in football,”
“We were down to 10 men for a while which was tough, and we’re extremely disappointed of course.”
Malaga, who had Francisco Portillo dismissed late on for two yellow cards, sit 14th in La Liga, but still only a point above two of the sides in the bottom three.
“From the very first match of the season we knew this year would be difficult, which it’s turning out to be.
“Looking at the team now it’s clear where we are at this point in the League competition.
“Having Mounir [El Hamdaoui] and Roque [Santa Cruz] injured is hard, but then on the other hand younger players like Juanmi and Samu are giving their all to the first team and have scored in the last three matches.
“We were aware of the difficulty from the start, so there have been no surprises.
“We’ll never give up, and will always continue to fight through these difficult times.
“Even though we’re really disappointed after tonight’s game, we need to dust ourselves off and prepare for the next battle on Friday.”
Malaga travel to Villarreal then for Week 15.
