Elche CF have appointed Martin Anselmi as their new head coach, bringing the Argentine in to lead the project. At the same time, the club faces an immediate roster gap at left-back, a demarcation that has thinned out over the summer and now sits near the top of their to-do list.

The departures are what create the urgency. French full-back Leo Petrot has ended his time at Elche after a season in which he featured heavily and contributed to the team staying up, playing in the region of 36 matches. On top of that, the club will not take up the purchase option on Adria Pedrosa, who had arrived on loan from Sevilla. Losing two options at the same position in one window forces a club straight into the market.

A new coach and a clear first task

For Anselmi, inheriting a defined weakness can actually be useful. It gives an incoming coach a concrete early priority and a chance to shape a signing in his own image rather than adapting to a squad built by someone else. How he wants his full-backs to defend and to build play will guide the kind of profile the club pursues.

The continuity of another wide man, Josan, remained unresolved at the time of these reports, adding to the sense that Elche's flank positions are a live area of the squad rather than a settled one.

Why the position matters

The story is a neat illustration of how central full-back is to a modern team. When a club loses depth there, it is not just cover that disappears, it is a source of width in attack, a defensive one-on-one specialist and a key link in building out from the back. That is why full-back can quietly become a make-or-break area of a squad.

For US coaches, the wider lesson is about squad planning and roster depth. Losing two players in the same role in a single window shows how quickly a position can go from settled to a priority. Building a pipeline of players who can cover flank positions, and developing versatility so more players can fill in, is exactly the kind of planning that keeps a season from being derailed by a couple of departures.

Anselmi's first window will be judged in part on how he solves this. A newly promoted side needs to reinforce smartly rather than spend for its own sake, and left-back is where that work starts.