Mauricio Pellegrino has urged his Alaves players to ignore their Copa del Rey exploits ahead of Saturday’s trip to Deportivo La Coruna in La Liga.
Alaves were thrashed 6-0 by Barcelona last weekend, in their first game since reaching the Copa final, and Pellegrino admitted his players were not showing enough composure in possession.
“We must be ambitious as possible without thinking too much about the points,” the Coach said at a Press conference,
“Points are the consequence of what you do on the pitch. The League is the most important competition and we must give all our strength to it.
“Depor? It’ll be very difficult against them because the games between both teams have been very tight and there’s been very little advantage for either team.
“Depor are a team that play good football, possessed quality and have controlled almost all their home games, so it’ll be very tough.
“One of the most important things for us to be able to compete is to be intense and play at the best of our capabilities.
“I want my players to be calm when in possession, since they are quite intense when applying pressure.
“We’re currently lacking when switching gears [from trying to win the ball back to] when we have the ball, and we lost a lot of possession in the first game at Riazor. Depor are good on the ball.
“The 6-0 defeat to Barca? It said a lot to [the players], but it wasn’t a game to magnify because they didn’t have much time to prepare for it.
“Still, we have to learn from it because defeats teach you more than victories.”
Rodrigo Ely is in line to make his Alaves debut, the Milan-owned defender having been named by Pellegrino for the first time, while midfielder Bruno Gama returns for Depor.
Deportivo La Coruna squad: Lux; Juanfran, Navarro, Mosquera, Albentosa, Joselu, Emre, Andone, Gil, Sidnei, Tyton, Arribas, Luisinho, Fajr, Guilherme, Gama, Borges, Kakuta
Alaves squad: Pacheco, Ortola; Rodrigo, Alexis, Laguardia, Theo, Femenia, Vigaray, Feddal; Llorente, Camarasa, Torres, Garcia, Romero; Sobrino, Santos, Ibai, Toquero, Deyverson
Referee: Jaime Latre
Kick-off time: 17:30 GMT/18:30 CET
