Sevilla Relive a Goal Drought from 20 Years Ago

Sevilla feel trapped in a familiar, exhausting pattern, a club with enormous history and expectations repeatedly dragged into survival mode.

It is not the first time they have flirted with disaster, and in previous seasons they have managed to pull themselves away from the edge, sometimes with room to breathe and sometimes with the fear clearly visible. This time, however, the warning lights are flashing with greater intensity. The first half of the LaLiga season has ended with Sevilla only 3 points above the relegation zone, and their form offers little comfort: just 7 points taken from the last 33 available, a return that typically belongs to teams fighting to avoid the drop, not one that usually measures itself by European nights and trophy runs.

The atmosphere around the club is shaped by a mixture of anxiety and resignation. There is the sense that the problems are not isolated to one bad run of results, but tied to deeper issues that have been building over time, from squad construction to recurring injuries, and from financial limitations to an erosion of confidence. Sevilla look like a team carrying too much weight, trying to function under constraints that turn every setback into something harder to recover from.

Matias Almeyda, in that context, is often described as doing what he can with what he has. The criticism is not primarily directed at him because the limitations are visible: injuries have disrupted continuity, several key players have lacked either fitness or consistent form, and the overall quality in crucial areas has not been enough to control matches or turn periods of pressure into goals. The squad needs a rethink, but those decisions are made above the coaching staff, and Sevilla’s current reality is that correcting structural weaknesses requires resources the club does not readily have.

That financial reality has become a central part of the story. Winter is typically when struggling teams seek a corrective injection, but January business is difficult even for stable clubs, and Sevilla’s situation is far from stable. The club is waiting for a sale that would give the sporting department at least some margin to maneuver, yet days pass without that decisive outgoing deal. Without it, the recruitment plan becomes more wish list than strategy. The message from within is that the forward line is the priority, marked in red as the area that most urgently needs reinforcement. But signing attacking players in mid-season is expensive, and doing it without money narrows the options to loans, opportunistic bargains, or gambles.

While the market stalls, the results have become increasingly alarming. Against Celta Vigo in the last round, Sevilla suffered their 4th consecutive defeat. Even more worrying, it was their 4th straight match without scoring, following blanks against Alaves, Real Madrid, Levante and Celta. A winless run is damaging; a scoring drought is demoralising. It changes how a team plays and how opponents approach them. When players begin to feel that one goal conceded might be enough to lose the match, risk tolerance drops, confidence in forward decisions declines, and the football becomes heavier.

Historically, this kind of drought is not common for a club of Sevilla’s stature. You have to go back to March 2005 to find the last time they went 4 matches in a row without scoring. That sequence was brutal: a 3-0 defeat to Atletico, a 0-0 home draw with Parma in the first leg of a UEFA Cup last-16 tie, a 0-1 loss at the Sanchez-Pizjuan to Zaragoza, and then elimination in Parma after a 1-0 defeat. The comparison is not meant to suggest the same Sevilla, because the club has transformed dramatically since then, but the statistic highlights how rare it is for Sevilla to go this long without finding the net. It is a landmark of dysfunction, and it reinforces the point that their biggest problem is not merely defending or controlling phases of play. Their biggest problem is that they do not have enough threat.

Almeyda has not attempted to disguise that reality. Goals have again become the club’s most urgent need, but he has openly admitted he is not optimistic about what can be achieved in the transfer window, precisely because of the financial context. His message is as blunt as it is revealing: everyone knows Sevilla’s economic situation, and it is difficult to reinforce the team from anywhere. That is why, he explains, he speaks so often about calm and awareness, about accepting the pain of the moment without letting it sink the group. It is the language of a manager trying to protect a fragile dressing room from panic, and at the same time managing expectations externally by acknowledging the limitations.

The goal-scoring numbers underline how thin the attacking production has been. Sevilla’s top scorers in LaLiga this season are Akor Adams, Isaac Romero and Ruben Vargas, each with 3 goals. For a club with Sevilla’s ambitions, that distribution is a red flag: it suggests no player has taken on the role of consistent finisher, and the team is relying on scattered contributions rather than a reliable source of goals. Isaac Romero, the forward from Lebrija, has added another goal in the Copa del Rey, but in the league he has not scored since 5 October against Barcelona. A drought of that length for one of the leading scorers tells you the problem is not a single bad match. It is persistent.

Personnel issues have made that problem worse at exactly the wrong time. Akor Adams left to join Nigeria at the Africa Cup of Nations after what was described as his best match as a Sevilla player, scoring and assisting against Oviedo. Losing a forward who has momentum is damaging in any season; in Sevilla’s season, it is severe. He is now involved deep in the tournament and is set to face Morocco in the semi-finals, while Sevilla are left trying to solve a scoring crisis without one of their few proven contributors.

Vargas, meanwhile, is another symbol of the club’s frustration. The Swiss attacker is missed, but not because he has been consistently available. He has suffered 4 injuries in 10 months, a pattern that makes it difficult for any coaching staff to plan around him or build automatisms with him in the line-up. His most recent return was cruelly brief, lasting only 5 minutes on the pitch against Celta before he had to stop again. When a team lacks goals, it tends to rely more heavily on individuals who can create something unexpected, whether through a dribble, a quick combination, or a moment of quality in the final third. If that player is never available long enough to build rhythm, the entire attack becomes predictable.

All of this feeds back into the same cycle: Sevilla struggle to score, results worsen, pressure increases, confidence drops, injuries and absences hurt more, and the market offers no easy escape route. The second half of the season still has everything to play for, but the landscape is unforgiving. Sevilla are now only competing in LaLiga, which removes the distractions of Europe and cup rotation, but it also removes alternative sources of momentum. There are no European nights to reset belief, no midweek run to change the narrative, only league matches that increasingly carry the weight of survival.

With what they currently have, the sense is that it is not enough. Sevilla can talk about calm, and they can try to grind out points through organisation and effort, but without a significant improvement in their ability to score, the table will not be kind. That is why the forward line is highlighted as the priority and why the word urgency keeps returning. Every week without goals makes the problem harder, not only mathematically, but psychologically. And for a club that is used to living in a different part of the table, fighting relegation while searching desperately for the simplest thing in football, a goal, is the most punishing kind of crisis.