Pepe Mel spoke before the media after the victory obtained at El Molinón Stadium

First half: “It’s easy to explain: we were much slower than Sporting. If you don’t have intensity, don’t win all the divided balls and second chances you get stuck and unable to play. We talked about that at half time, so we played Joaquín in the middle as a link with the striker. It worked and we scored two beautiful goals. This match reminded me to the one last year here, I’d like to be a spectator in every Sporting-Betis. Both teams want to play and win. We already know that the second leg against them is going to be difficult, Sporting is a terrific team.”

Cejudo was substituted instead of Rubén: “It was supposed to be Rubén, but the teammates told me that Cejudo was injured. I want to apologise to Abelardo, it wasn’t planned that way. We try not to do that kind of things and he understood it.. We’ll see how Cejudo is for the next match. Luckily we could make the change in and I repeat that it wasn’t on purpose.”

The goal is not to get relegated and have a calm season: “Only Madrid and Barcelona don’t get relegated at ease. There are plenty of good teams in the low part of the table. I hope Sporting won’t have troubles either. They deserve it because of the way they are as a team, because of their manager and their fans. The have institutional problems, like us, and we both will be in La Liga next year.”

Fair score?: “I stopped talking about fair scores long ago, the score is what it is. If you concede five goals, like we did in Bernabéu, maybe it’s fair. I’ve got the feeling that we should have beaten Villarreal CF, but seeing how they have performed afterwards we have to be happy. Sporting won in Coruña, Deportivo beat us in Sevilla and now we’ve won in Gijon. It’s all very complicated.”

Sporting’s intensity: “Last year they didn’t stop being strong and they score three goals in our Stadium. They’re young, their manager does not stop pushing and their fans won’t let many teams to win here.”

Sporting chances for the victory: “They had the match in the first half when we were awful. At half time we had time to peak about what was going on. The players believed in it and we saw a different Betis since the very beginning. Their options were in the first half. We were lucky to go into half time just 1-0, otherwise it would have been very difficult.”

Halilovic: “His manager has reasons to make him improve. Sporting has a great pace upfront. I saw him play in the same position in Vallecas and he did very well. He creates chances and is a very interesting player. Sporting will be benefited wherever he plays.”