Official: Ever Banega extends contract to 2015

Valencia CF official website announced that Ever Banega has officially extended his contract with Valencia CF until 2015.

The agreement has been reached after about 2 weeks of serious negotiations, which actually is quite fast. In the past Inter, Tottenham and Liverpool have been interested in Banega, but the interests cooled off after a poor performance by Banega for Argentina.

Both Banega and Valencia president Manuel Llorente expressed happiness about the the contract extension.

Valencia CF vs Real Sociedad - Match Preview

Valencia CF will welcome Real Sociedad tonight at 22:00 hours central eastern time at the Mestalla for what is going to be a very interesting match. Valencia CF is coming to this game after a hard fought victory against Sevilla and even though they lost the game Valencia went on to the next round of the Copa Del Rey because of aggregate away goal rule victory.

Real Sociedad has historically been a preferable opponent and Valencia has great results against them, so this coupled with the fact that the team just played in the Copa, Unai Emery will likely field a completely different team and rest few key players.

Judging from the training Emery is going to start with Aduriz, because Soldado is suspended for this match at the front, Parejo just behind Aduriz, Topal and Tino on the places of Albelda and Banega, Piatti on the left wing replacing Mathieu and Pablo on the right wing replacing Feghuoli.

The back line is going to change as well with Ruiz out of the squad and it wouldn't surprise me to see Dealbert start, as there has been talk that Ricardo Costa is on his way out of the club in the winter transfer market. Bruno is likely to take Miguel's place as the right back and we may also see Guaita on goal if he has recovered.

With Soldado out of the team through suspension, Emery has called up Paco Alcacer and hopefully we'll see him play tonight, he certainly deserves it and needs the experience.

Valencia CF squad:
Goalkeepers: Guaita, Diego Alves.
Defenders: Bruno, Barragán, Rami, Ricardo Costa, Dealbert, Mathieu, Jordi Alba.
Midfielders: Topal, Tino Costa, Éver, Dani Parejo, Pablo, Feghouli, Piatti.
Forwards: Jonas, Alcácer, Aduriz.

David Albelda to be offered contract extension

Manuel Llorente in a press conference early in the day said the club is going to offer David Albelda a contract extension of one year. David Albelda extended his contract last season by 1 year and is set to expire on the 30th June in the summer and Valencia is moving quickly to extend his contract as he has been a valuable asset to the team starting most of the matches and overshadowing Topal.

If you asked anyone last season they would have told you this is effectively going to be Albelda's last season and Topal will take over the reigns, but with few less than stellar performances Topal has fallen back in the pecking order and Albelda has provided consistency in the defensive midfield role as always.

Unai Emery also spoke and said David Albelda deserves a contract extension due to his good performances and positive attitude.

Albelda has been a good example both on in games, training, on and off the field and also commands respect in the dressing room something certainly Emery wants to have.

Fellow Valencia website closing down

http://loco4losche.com/blogweb/index.php is a fellow Valencia CF website which I know most of you probably know and has been serving the Valencia fan community for the past 3 years. Its unfortunate Kyle is closing it down, but one can understand his choice.

I'd like to wish him good luck in all of his future endeavors and hope he stays a Valencia CF fan. As they say once you go Valencianista, you never go back. :)

Hopefully I can step up and try to soften up this blow by providing you with more news and articles.

Sevilla FC 2-1 Valencia CF (2-2 agg) - player ratings

Diego 5.5 - Did great in the first half, but very insecure at the second and could have possibly done more for the second goal.
Miguel 6.5 - Good game from the Portuguese, rarely troubled and dealt with everything on his side fairly easily.
Rami 5.5 - Few silly mistakes and one blunder early in the game, but improved as the game wore on, but not the most assuring defending.
Ruiz 4 - Did well in the first half and looked the securer of the two defenders, but way worse in the second half with a lot of terrifying moments, scoring an own goal being of of those.
Mathieu 5.5 - Had a mixed game, several good tackles and marking, but got beaten few times as well.
Albelda 5.5 - Did well enough to cover, but made few bad passes in the first half giving away possesion in bad positions.
Banega 5.5 - Had some good moves and passes, but could not stamp his authority and did loose the ball several times in bad positions.
Feghuoli 5 - Run consistently all over the pitch and he is a machine in that sense, but lacked dribbling and technical skills to do much forward.
Jonas 6 - Was largely anonymous until a perfect deep pass to Soldado for the goal.
Alba 6.5 - One of the best performers on the pitch with good forward runs and good defending as well.
Soldado 6.5 - Scored a goal with a superb finish and was generally a threat with his runs for Sevilla.
Subs:
Tino 5 - Didn't do much and failed to have much contact with the ball as he was mostly acting as another defensive midfielder.
Parejo N/A - Not enough time
Pablo N/A - Not enough time

Finally in recent history to be able to go deeper into some competition and hopefully we continue with good results. The match itself was quite interesting and very scary towards the end as the suspension mounted and the last 2 minutes were hearth stopping. I don't know how much more of these games I can handle.

From the start it was all about Sevilla with ruthless pressure on our players forcing them to make errors and then having chances on goal. Diego Alves was called few times in the first half with two good opportunities for Sevilla, but Diego was on task and managed to defend. It was only around the 30th minute when the pressure dissipated and Valencia CF started playing more and even threaten Sevilla's goal.

The second half brought more of the same as in the first half, until Jonas made this superb pas out of nowhere to release Soldado alone in front of the goal and Soldado with an equally impressive finish slotted the ball past the goalkeeper.

The celebration would be short lived though and Sevilla would immediately level back the score to 1-1.
Sevilla would continue attacking until they managed to score another one in the 91st minute to make the end terrifying for Valencia CF fans. Sevilla had a chance to win in the last seconds as Kanoute got his head to a long cross, but was unable to direct in on goal and it went out with the whistle blowing there after to end the game with a victory for Valencia.

Jordi Alba agent negotiating with Barcelona

Ever since Jordi Alba got into the Spanish national team Barcelona has stepped up their interest in Valencia's left back Jordi Alba, even though they've denied any serious interest.

Jordi Alba also spoke some time ago how he feels great in Valencia and that he would like to continue his career in Valencia CF. But his representatives seem to telling us something different as they've been seen talking to Barcelona representatives about a potential transfer.

Jordi Alba as I've written yesterday is valued at 10 million market value, though I'm pretty sure Valencia will want more, though I believe his transfer fee isn't much higher than 10 millions and if Barcelona pushed they can easily take Alba, assuming he wants to leave, which I have no doubt that he would love to move to Barcelona.

Valencia CF players market value - January

Valencia CF has some really talented players in its squad, but how much are they really worth?

This is a tough process because there are no measurable element, there is no mathematical formula to form the price of a player, its basically how much the club values its own player and at what price is the club willing to sell the player.

The following list is based on current values and it can change depending on performance.



1. Roberto Soldado, 26 years old; positions: ST - 15 million euros
2. Ever Banega, 23 years old; positions: CM, AM - 12 million euros
2. Adil Rami, 25 years old; positions: CD - 12 million euros
3. Jeremy Mathieu, 27 years old; positions: LB - 11 million euros
4. Jordi Alba, 22 years old; positions: LB, LM, LW - 10 million euros
5. Diego Alves, 26 years old; positions: GK - 9 million euros
6. Pablo Hernandez, 26 years old; positions: RM, RW, AM, LW - 8 million euros
6. Tino Costa, 26 years old; positions: CM, AM - 8 million euros
6. Jonas, 27 years old; positions: AM, CF, ST - 8 million euros
6. Victor Ruiz, 22 years old; positions: CD - 8 million euros
7. Aritz Aduriz, 30 years old; positions: ST - 7 million euros
8. Mehmet Topal, 25 years old; positions: DM - 6 million euros
8. Daniel Parejo, 22 years old; positions: AM - 6 million euros
8. Sergio Canales, 20 years old; positions: AM, LM - 6 million euros
9. Hedwiges Maduro, 26 years old; positions: CD, DM, CM - 5 million euros
9. Vicente Guaita, 24 years old; positions: GK - 5 million euros
10. Angel Dealbert, 28 years old; positions: CD - 3.5 million euros
10. Sofiane Feghuoli, 21 years old; positions: AM, LW - 3.5 million euros
11. Ricardo Costa, 30 years old; positions: SW, CD - 3 million euros
12. David Albelda, 33 years old; positions: CD, DM, CF - 3 million euros
13. Miguel Brito, 31 years old; positions: RB - 2 million euros
14. Bruno Saltor, 30 years old; positions: RB, LB - 2 million euros