Sanse's self-sabotage: How Real Sociedad B keep throwing away winning positions

Real Sociedad B have developed a nasty habit of shooting themselves in the foot this season, with the young Basque outfit repeatedly failing to convert winning positions into three points.

The numbers don’t lie

The stats make for proper grim reading if you’re a Sanse supporter. The B team have actually gone ahead in a whopping 13 of their 24 LaLiga Hypermotion matches this campaign - that’s over half their games! Yet they’ve only managed to convert six of those advantages into actual victories. Talk about dropping points when it matters.

This tendency to chuck away leads has been particularly costly, with many collapses happening in the final minutes of matches. These lost points have proven absolutely crucial in their relegation scrap, leaving them languishing in the drop zone when they could’ve been sitting pretty mid-table.

A season of what-ifs

The pattern was established early doors:

• Started brilliantly with a 1-0 win over Zaragoza at Anoeta
• But then squandered 2-1 and 3-1 leads against Almería and Cádiz, both ending in draws
• Dropped more points from a winning position against Córdoba

There was a brief purple patch where they seemed to have sorted themselves out, stringing together an impressive run of results that lifted them out of the relegation places:

• Victories over Andorra (3-0), Huesca (2-0), Leganés (2-1)
• Continued with wins against Valladolid (1-0) and Deportivo de la Coruña (0-3)

But old habits die hard, as they say, and Sanse have reverted to type in recent weeks. They’ve failed to convert leads in matches against Ceuta, Cultural Leonesa, Zaragoza and Las Palmas - the latter ending 1-1 despite Sanse taking the advantage.

Competing well but lacking killer instinct

The frustrating thing for Imanol Alguacil and the coaching staff is that Sanse are generally competing well. Going ahead in over half your matches shows there’s genuine quality in the squad - but their inability to see games out is costing them dearly.

Of those 13 matches where they’ve taken the lead, they’ve been pegged back to a draw six times and suffered a complete turnaround defeat once. That’s seven games where they’ve had three points in their grasp and ended up with one or none.

If Sanse had converted even half of those dropped points, they’d be sitting comfortably in mid-table rather than facing a proper battle for survival. Instead, they’re stuck in a dogfight, needing to fix their bottle job tendencies sharpish if they want to maintain their LaLiga Hypermotion status next season.