Eibar vs Levante preview - Mendilibar plays down Levante clash

Levante coach Jose Luis Mendilibar has laughed off the suggestions that his side's game at Eibar is a must-win match.

The Valencia club are 19th in the Primera Division with just four points from six games but the coach believes it is too early to sound the alarm.

He told a press conference: "You can't have a final in the seventh week of the season. It's true that we only have four points and are penultimate in the table, but we can't be talking about finals at this stage. It'd be better for us if we win and feel good about how we play but of course this game is not like a final for us."

The coach also insisted he is not concerned that a negative result against Eibar could threaten his job.

"I'm not worried about what could happen to me, I just want my team to win," he said.

"Everything I do I do thinking about the interests of my team and sometimes I will get it wrong, that will happen more than once, given the position we are in, but I'm not thinking about it (his job)."

However, the coach did admit to having a meeting with the club's president Quico Catalan and sporting director Manolo Salvador during the week.

"We spoke about the mutual concern there is among the coaches, the dressing room and in the upper echelons of the club," he explained.

"We know that we haven't started well, that we are struggling a lot and that we are at the wrong end of the table. We spoke a bit about everything, about football, and they wanted to know things first hand, that's normal when people are concerned."

Levante also have reasons to be concerned about off the pitch matters too, as the club are in the midst of an investigation into alleged match fixing by Spain's state prosecutor. Eight players involved in the side's 2-1 defeat to Real Zaragoza in May 2011 were questioned by the state prosecutor, among them defenders Hector Rodas and Juanfran Garcia.

But Mendilibar insisted the issue would not play on the minds of the two players or the rest of the squad.

"They are relaxed about it, and if they tell me they are relaxed about it so am I," he said.

"I also spoke with the president and they have nothing to do with the issue. We will see who was and who wasn't responsible for the debacle, and I have to trust the players. The majority of the people at the club now weren't there then."

Levante have a total of six players missing for the trip to Eibar, including defender Tono Garcia, who tore a thigh muscle during the defeat to Rayo. The Basque side, who sit seventh in the table on eight points, have just the one absence, injured forward Manu del Moral.