Ten league games have passed. Twelve in all if you include the cup. After a summer of overhaul and anticipation, we finally have something tangible to assess. Castilla under Álvaro Arbeloa is starting to take shape after a chaotic start, so let’s dive into the first ten games and analyse how this sets the team up for the winter.
From Crisis to Contenders?
All in all, pre-season was superb. I had never seen a coach implement his ideas in such a short space of time, and the team only lost one game (and
that was against higher opposition), and put in some impressive performances. Squad planning did not appear fantastic, with the team ending up with one left-back and one winger, but there was some investment in the side for the first time in what feels like a century – after Rachad Fettal, perhaps the most impressive player during the friendlies, was purchased from UD Almería for around a million euros. Things were looking positive. The issue? Pre-season results will always be meaningless. When the season actually got going, Castilla started in complete disarray. The first six matches (including the first Cup fixture) were an exercise in frustration. Castilla scraped a win over Lugo on opening day, but then fell into a rut of sluggish, directionless football. Losses to Racing Ferrol, Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna B, and a comprehensive home defeat to Tenerife raised early red flags about cohesion and quality. Even the victories felt unconvincing. Players were injured, and being dragged here, there and everywhere for first team, C team and international duty, but Castilla players are always being dragged here, there and everywhere for first team, C team and international duty. At this point, Castilla sat firmly in the relegation zone, and it was fair to ask what was going wrong for Álvaro Arbeloa.
Then came the turning point. Matchday seven brought a much needed 1-0 win over Pontevedra, and since then, Castilla have looked far more like a cohesive team. There are still cracks here and there, but it’s been consistently positive for some time. Five wins and a draw in the last six league matches now see them sitting 3rd in the table with 18 points. A huge achievement, considering how things started.
Key Stats So Far:
League Record: 7W, 1D, 4L (3rd place)
Goals For: 15 – Goals Against: 11 – League Goal Difference: +3
Top Scorer: César Palacios (4 goals)
Top Assister: César Palacios (3 assists)
Clean Sheets: 3 (Fran x2, Javi x1)
Player Performances
Jorge Cestero has been the player of the season so far, and a refreshing revelation for Castilla. Back up coming from the academy has been notoriously shoddy over the past few years and when Cestero’s promotion from Juvenil A was announced, nobody looked twice. But rather than being just another Antonio David, right from game one – Cestero has been Castilla’s top performer, catapulting out of nowhere to overtake the likes of Thiago Pitarch in the pecking order, and permanently cementing his name on the team sheet. Calm, composed and technically sharp. The biggest compliment? He’s made everyone forget about the Abdullah Ouzane disaster.
After a quiet first few matches coming back from a lengthy injury, César Palacios has now caught fire. Direct and decisive in the final third, his performance and end product have begun to carry Castilla away from danger and their initial form. He is now both Castilla’s top scorer, and assister – and if he continues this way, he will outperform Cestero and anyone else for that matter. Is there another Gonzalo García about to emerge from the shadows?
Other notable performers include Víctor Valdepeñas, Mario Rivas, David Jiménez, Manuel Ángel, Bruno Iglesias, Loren Zúñiga and Daniel Yáñez. Joan Martínez has settled into senior football well after recovering from an injury of his own, and has probably been the team’s best defender so far this season. The feeling with Joan is that there are levels to his game we are yet to see despite his good progress.
After ten games, it is a quiet shame that a player as talented as Jesús Fortea has no noteworthy contributions, with the same going for the also-promising Lamini Fati. Still, only ten games in there is plenty of time for these two, and other unmentioned Castilla players to pick up some form and get things going.
Premier League International Cup
Castilla’s debut in the Premier League International Cup has been quietly positive so far. They opened the group stage with a narrow 1-0 win over Wolves U21 despite looking second best for most of the game, thanks to a brilliantly taken Bruno Iglesias free-kick. The second fixture, a 1-1 draw against Southampton, was far more encouraging even without the three points. Arbeloa’s side played some great football and deserved more, especially considering Saints fielded a couple of first-team players. The Cup itself is a bit of a mess, with games occurring few and far in-between. Still, fans will just be happy to see the team in a new competition, and gaining the experience of facing unfamiliar, physical opposition will serve them well across the season.
Arbeloa’s Castilla: Verdict So Far
The first ten matches have shown us two different Castilla’s. One erratic, inexperienced and unsure of itself. The other? A hard-working, tactically intelligent group with real potential. Álvaro Arbeloa deserves both plaudits and critics. His philosophy is clear. The system attempts to mirror that of the first team: a narrow 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 hybrid, lots of short-passing combinations, high full-backs, and an aggressive press when out of possession. Unlike Raúl, Arbeloa has been more daring with selections and has imposed a really positive attacking (and pressing) structure. Also unlike Raúl, Arbeloa possesses no ‘Plan B’. As with any of his academy sides, when Castilla are found out, they lose. This was one of my two biggest concerns when his promotion was confirmed, and for Castilla I fear this could be a margin that denies them the play-offs or a chance at promotion. As long as Plan A continues to deliver results though, few will complain.
The goals are being spread around, albeit thinly. With no clear talismanic striker emerging (Zúñiga has done okay and could hit double figures as predicted, but has currently gained almost all of the playing time without overly impressing), the attacking burden has shifted to midfielders and defenders. Rachad Fettal has been out for a while due to injury, and after failing to score on his debut – his competitive goalscoring record raises questions over how many goals he could potentially contribute to the team.
Looking Ahead
The next block of games will tell us a lot more. The squad still clearly lacks natural width, depth at left-back and in other positions, and injuries and international or first team duty doesn’t always help (Thiago Pitarch has barely been seen since being the revelation of the summer). But there’s a sense now that this team knows what it is, with the only question remaining being how far can they go? I predicted them to finish 6th, just short of the play-offs before a ball was kicked, and from what I have seen – I don’t think I’d change that stance after ten league games. The lack of quality elsewhere in the league may be a blessing for Los Blancos, who jumped from 18th to 3rd in four games, but truth be told – they have not looked like a side who deserves to be third in the league. In ten good performances’ time, that statement could well change, and Inside Castilla will be following every step of the journey with podcasts, match threads, and analysis over on our X feed, Reddit community and Spotify. Episode 2 drops very soon. Vamos.
