The Madrid-born manager said he was optimistic as he looks towards the start of the season, after his team’s first defeat in Madeira, stating "we are clear about the road we need to take in the second division in order to stay within reach of what we want".
Mel assessed his team’s defensive work, saying "we need to be strong, in the first forty-five minutes we looked realy good although we lacked accuracy with our final pass", adding that there were still errors that needed correcting, specifically "they shouldn’t score against us from a throw-in, we need to be sharper in those situations".
The manager was not unduly worried about the team’s lack of sharpness in attack, saying "we don’t need to look at the lack of goals right now, as Araujo has only had two training sessions while Rubén has seen no action yet, we are just working on our defensive concepts at the moment".
"We still have four pre-season matches to go, and we need to put out teams that can be solid, everyone will get match action and I am sure that when the final match against Betis is over that the players will know who I want and who I won’t want no", he stated.
Lemos, Rubén and Aythami, who are working their way back to fitness, "will be re-joining the squad on Monday, and I hope we can see them featuring before the end of pre-season", he concluded in the Estadio do Marítimo.
