Girona's La Liga position, broken down

Nineteenth place, and that tells you more than any points total

Girona have played 38 league games this season and conceded 55 goals, which means on average every other match has ended with them shipping more than a goal and a half before they've even thought about winning it. Forty-one points, nineteenth place, and the Girona club hub tells a story of a side that has never quite been able to put a sequence together long enough to stop looking over their shoulder.

Nineteenth in a twenty-team division. One place above the bottom of La Liga, which means the only comfort available is that someone else has had it worse. That is not much to hold onto at the end of a 38-game season.

The points gap matters less than the position here, because in Spanish football the drop is three clubs and Girona have spent the season uncomfortably close to the wrong end of that calculation. Forty-one points might sound survivable, and it might be, depending on what the rest of the table has done. but finishing nineteenth means you are a club that has spent a whole campaign one bad run away from a very different summer. Bryan Gil was brought in to provide something unpredictable going forward, and Vladyslav Vanat has been asked to carry the goal threat upfront. Between them they have not produced nearly enough, and a side with only 39 league goals across a full season is never going to feel comfortable sitting where Girona sit.

There is a version of this squad that finishes mid-table. The skeleton is there. But this season has not been that version, and the league position is the honest verdict.

Fifty-five goals against

That number is damning. Fifty-five goals conceded in 38 games is roughly 1.45 per match, and for a side that only scores 1.02 per game at the other end, the maths has been punishing all year.

Marc-André ter Stegen is the name that draws attention in this squad, a goalkeeper of genuine European pedigree. and his presence alongside Paulo Gazzaniga gives Girona more between the posts than a side in nineteenth perhaps deserves. The problem has not been the goalkeepers. The problem has been in front of them. Casals, Pol Arnau and Gibert Jordana have formed the backbone of a defence that has not held firm often enough, and while it would be unfair to single out individuals from a collective failure, the goals-against total is a collective problem that no single piece of quality at the back has been able to fix.

A goal difference of minus sixteen over a full season means this defence has been beaten more than it has contributed to winning football. You can dress that up however you like, but minus sixteen is the kind of number that explains nineteenth place without needing anything else added.

What interests me about Gazzaniga specifically is that he offers genuine quality as cover, this is not a weak backup situation. but two good goalkeepers cannot compensate for a back line that has leaked in the manner this one has. The defenders named in this squad are not household names across Europe, and against the sharper attacking sides in La Liga that gap in quality has been exposed, repeatedly. If Girona are serious about not going through this again, the defensive rebuild has to be the priority, not a tweak.

The midfield share of the blame

Axel Witsel arriving in midfield alongside Azzedine Ounahi and Ricard Artero should have provided the kind of defensive solidity that protects a back four. Witsel at his best is a shield, experienced, positionally intelligent. Whether that version has turned up this season is a separate question, but 55 goals conceded points to a midfield that has not screened the defence well enough, whatever the individual quality on paper might suggest. See our predictions for how we've assessed similar defensive collapses in La Liga this term.

Fourteen draws is the real problem

Nine wins, fourteen draws, fifteen defeats. The draws are the thing. Fourteen draws across a season means Girona have been in games, have competed, have sometimes deserved more. and then not got it. If half of those draws had been wins, this would be a comfortable mid-table season and nobody would be writing about survival anxiety. Instead, those dropped points are the difference between a forgettable but fine campaign and a season spent in nineteenth.

Football clubs talk about dropped points as though they are a quirk of fate, bad luck, a deflection here or a late equaliser there. But fourteen draws across 38 games is a pattern. It means Girona have consistently been unable to close out matches, or have been unable to find a winner when the game is level. A side with 39 goals in 38 games is always going to struggle to break deadlocks, and that is where the draws come from, not from defensive brilliance holding onto a lead, but from a lack of firepower to turn one goal into two.

Javi Sarasa in attack alongside Vanat and Gil represents a forward line that should, in theory, be capable of more than 39 goals. The draw record, though, points to a squad that too often plays to a stalemate rather than winning ugly. Fifteen defeats is painful, but you can lose and rebuild. Fourteen draws is a slow bleed that leaves you in nineteenth wondering what might have been if someone had just found the net one more time in eight or nine of those matches. You can check the Kwiff review for context on how La Liga sides like this have been assessed from a betting perspective this year. the draw rate alone would have told a story all season.

Fourteen draws. That is the number this club has to confront in the summer.

Bryan Gil has the ability to be the player who changes that, quick, direct, capable of the unexpected moment that breaks a game open. Whether Girona build around him or let him go will say everything about where the club thinks it is headed.