One Of Us

News today is that coach Iñaki Alonso has sacked his agent after the rumours for the last few weeks. Alonso made his position clear, and has taken the step, clearly unhappy with his ex-agents actions. Being offered to arch-rivals Cartagena behind one's back was never going to end any other way, especially with Iñaki's clear commitment to the Real Murcia cause. I've talked before about the fact that irrespective of the play-off result (anything can happen) I think that Iñaki Alonso should be our long term manager, our Ferguson or Wenger.

Each time I hear him speak he is eloquent, educated and subtle. I can see why he can, at the same time as gaining the respect of the players, also enter into the leg pulling and banter that is good for any dressing room. Evidently he is a clever bloke, and I can also see that sometimes he may get up the odd self-important hackettes nose as he becomes a tad aloof and/or peed off with a deliberately negative or absurdly critical line of questioning.

On the touchline he is calmness personified......but i'm sure that on the inside he is all churned up. It's calmness that transmits itself to the 11 on the pitch, a sureness, an quiet confidence whatever the circumstance, a confidence that the hard work on the training pitch, the meticulous study of the opponent, having all the homework done, will at some stage of the 90 minutes, pay off. Of course games can be lost, but not even Barcelona can get through a season without a blip.

Yesterday was another example of his complete understanding of the situation and of the feelings of the fans. The removal of his anarchic agent is a clever move.

Asked about Lugo, he said that :

"I have great memories of them - at Irun we eliminated them from the cup and also did well in the league. They are a good side, against who we will have to be at maximum if we want to win, but it is a team that I like as a rival. In Lugo they have great respect for us, and for sure we will have a good chance to gain promotion if we are capable of keeping humility as our flag"

"I have a lot of desire to work to culminate the efforts that the whole team have made during the whole season". He's not too concerned about playing the second leg away from home...."Real Murcia gained promotion away from home last time, why shouldn't we do it again this time?"

"It's a big responsibility, but if we do things well and as we know, we have many options to go up. Lugo have good players, and a great coach, but if we are intense we can create many problems for them"

Photo : Iñaki Alonso....One Of Us. Hopefully for a very long time.