Raul Albentosa spoke to the press in Abegondo this morning.

The Deportivista centre-back stated, “I believe in this team, I believe in this group and we’re going to carry on whilst we have options.”

Throughout this week, the Branquiazul defender said that the team have made the most of this international break to “try and recover physically, and try to focus for next week’s game,” against Atletico de Madrid on Sunday 1 April at the Wanda Metropolitano (8:45 pm, Bein LaLiga).

He would have preferred to be able to carry on competing given the team’s complicated situation, “especially as we deserved to win last week, even though we didn’t gain the 3 points. Because two weeks then take forever to go by.”

According to Albentosa, this is because “we’re tense, and anxious for match day to come to try and achieve 3 points. But that’s football. Everything can change in one day. We need it to change and we need it to be matchday right away.”

He accepts “there's no margin (for error) anymore. We’re rock-bottom. We simply have to try and get 3 points at the Wanda. We have to carry on, because there are 9 games left.”

Notwithstanding, he said he neither looks at the standings nor is he calculating the probabilities: “It’s best not to look and take each match as it comes along. The first one is this one. There's nothing we can do about the past one, this is the first one. Whether it’s Atletico de Madrid or whoever, we have to go and try to win there.”

He is aware of the difficulty of achieving points at the Wanda, although he did point out “I don’t focus on that because Dépor is also a big team. The match is eleven against eleven. Nobody else plays, neither the crowd nor the press. At the end of the day, it’s eleven against eleven and whoever goes on after.”

He recalled that throughout his career, “I almost won there with Malaga, and with Eibar we gave them a tough time. There’s nothing impossible for me because I’ve lived it at other clubs that were smaller but gave every team a run for their money.”

He coincides with Juanfran in highlighting Clarence Seedorf’s “psychological work in the team. He is a person that conveys that aspect a lot. He can make you change your point of view in a minute. We appreciate that.”

Along these lines, Albentosa believes the psychologists’ work in the team is positive: “There are many fields of work in football and it’s good to have them all covered. The Club did well bringing them and they are helping us.”