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Granollers to win four of a kind

Guests wtih league's top scorer Apelgren attack Granollers in the mood; its game is based on solid defense

Granollers will be looking today for its fourth win in a row, and continuation of the maximum sequence, and keeping pace with the untouchable Barcelona on the very top of the championship table. Granollers for today's game have all its players at disposal. The Catalan team want to continue with good dynamics that put them abreast atop of Asobal league. Currently they live very sweet moments having entered the season in an excellent fashion, and today's match is a chance to continue that positive sequence in front of their home fans, against Puerto Sagunto coming its first this season's win. A priori Granollers are favorites to take points on home court, but this will have to be proven on the field with already seen effectiveness in attack, complemented by a solid and aggressive defense.

The Catalans are third most effective team in the league, but fourth best defense as well, which is the reason why they are just at the top. Statistics also speaks for the home team, because in all three encounters when Puerto Sagunto had visited Granollers, every time hosts celebrated, and the goal is to keep this tradition running, through this day. The recipe stays just the same as in three previous rounds, meaning a solid defense and fast transition, beside an agile and quick offense without lots of interruptions that enables a high rhythm and high goal count, which is what Granollers uses to break their opponents who can hardly follow their rhythm.

The defensive line of Granollers will have to pay special attention to the most dangerous player of the visiting team, center back Michael Apelgren who is at the same time the top scorer of the league with 22 goals scored in three rounds. It was just Apelgren who led his team to its first triumph of the season over Puente Genil, due to which the whole team gained on self-confidence. In such a good mood they arrived to Granollers to try surprising the hosts, currently among the teams possessing the best form. Nevertheles, coach Patxi Marti and his players hope they could get the points, and optimism is built on the last season's match when they were very close to the points, but in the last seconds they slipped away from their hands. Today their goal is to play a similar match, but with a different outcome, which would confirm that Puerto Sagunto has returned to good games and results needed to realize the projected goal, and avoid relegation. Visitors' coach will not have today Berrios on his team; he is still recovering from the knee surgery, from the last season, while everybody else is ready to play.

For years now Granollers's game is based on solid attack. Their matches are always fast paced and they score lots of goals. They have many young players in the team and they feel very comfortable when rushing up and down the court. In the first three rounds they played against very defensive teams and despite that fact Granollers was very close to the margin of 30 goals in every match. In one of those matches they scored more than 30 goals, and that was against the team that also tends to outplay their opponent and doesn't care about the defense that much. Their opponent today will be the team with top goalscorer in the league (7 goals per game in average) in starting lineup. Puerto Sagunto also likes to play attacking handball and they often score more than 25 goals. In the last round they scored 30 goals against Gijon, a very defensive team. Recently they played against Ademar (team very similar to Granollers), they scored 27 goals and total goals scored in the match went well over the margin (59). Today I expect a similar match. I think we should see 55 or more goals.