Jagoba Arrasate wants Monday's Sevilla Vs Osasuna match to tell him something new about his side. Speaking ahead of the game at Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán, the Osasuna coach said he wants to see whether his players can carry the same level from home to away after last Sunday's win and a full week of training.
Kickoff is set for 9 p.m. CET, and Arrasate framed the trip as a straight test of whether Osasuna can stay competitive on the road. He said he is eager to see the team play away from home against an opponent in good form and added that he does not want to see a different version of Osasuna when the venue changes.
The immediate backdrop is a 1-week stretch that began with victory over Real Racing de Santander last Sunday. Arrasate said that result gave the squad energy, but it did not change the work ahead. In his view, winning last weekend only raises the standard for Monday, because the team still has to improve in every area and cannot treat one solid result as a stopping point.
That is why he keeps coming back to the same point: Osasuna need to be the same side away from home that they are at other times. Arrasate said a win should bring joy, but it should also lead to a hard review of training, video and the details that decide tight matches. He said Osasuna must step it up if they want another positive result.
Sevilla, meanwhile, arrives with numbers that Arrasate thinks deserve respect. He said they have four wins, two draws and three losses, but he pushed those three defeats to the side because they came against the league's top three teams. In his assessment, that record still points to a team in strong form rather than one that can be judged by the losses alone.
He also described Sevilla as well organized, well coached and difficult to play against. Arrasate said they go forward, win duels and do not allow opponents to control the ball. That is the task in front of Osasuna now: not to admire the opponent, but to prove that a recent win can travel with them into one of the hardest away settings on the schedule.
The real answer starts Monday night. If Osasuna can look the same on the road as they did last week, Arrasate's warning about improvement will sound like a challenge met. If not, the gap between a home win and an away test will be the story that follows them out of Sevilla.
