On 28 May 2017, Real Sporting sacked Nicolás Rodríguez after three seasons as director of football,[1] and hired Miguel Torrecilla with the aim to replace him.

Carlos Carmona and Michael Santos scored the goals for the win that positioned Real Sporting in the second place at the end of the second round.

[12] On 31 August 2017, Real Sporting ended the transfer window by rescinding the contracts of Lillo and Dani Ndi and loaning Jean-Sylvain Babin to Maccabi Tel Aviv.

On 3 September 2017, Real Sporting reached the first position of the table after beating Gimnàstic 4–0 away and taking advantage of the loss of Tenerife against Valladolid.

This leadership arrived just one week before playing the Asturian derby against Oviedo, 14 years after both teams meet for the last time in official competition.

Before it, in the surroundings of the stadium, there were altercations between the National Police and the ultras of Real Sporting, ending with damages in the buses of both clubs and 12 arrested people.

In this match, Real Sporting missed two penalty kicks: firstly Stefan Šćepović, who scored twice, and later Carlos Castro in the additional time, after trying a Panenka.

The crisis increased in the club after the first loss at home, on 21 November, against Cádiz by 0–3 with former player David Barral scoring the last goal, and dropped to the eighth position in the league table.

[16] The month ended with an away 2–2 draw against Albacete, with Michael Santos scoring a brace for overcoming the first goal of Roman Zozulya.

On 11 December, the board of directors agreed to sack Paco Herrera[17] and to hire former Valencia player Rubén Baraja as the new head coach.

[18] He started his tenure in Sporting with a huge win by 3–0 against Tenerife, but the team showed the same problems when it plays away, during the match at Granada, that ended with a 1–2 loss.

In the last day of the month, Getafe and Sporting agreed to terminate the loan of Stefan Šćepović,[26] who played 16 league games and scored four goals in his second stage in Gijón, and was transferred to Hungarian club Videoton.

However, the team redeemed itself by beating Numancia in the next week by 2–0, achieving coach Rubén Baraja his fifth consecutive win at El Molinón.

In the third match of the month, Real Sporting continued without winning away and only could earn one goalless draw against Lorca FC, that cut their streak of ten consecutive losses.

On 1 April, Real Sporting came back provisionally to the leadership after beating 1–3 Almería and taking advantage of the draw between Rayo Vallecano and Cádiz and the postponement of the match between Huesca and Albacete.

Rubén García scored the only goal in the game played at Estadio José Zorrilla, with more than 4,000 supporters who travelled from Gijón for watching the match.

In the two next weeks, the club would practically end its options to directly promote to La Liga after another two consecutive losses: firstly a surprising one at El Molinón, by 2–3 against Barcelona and later, against Tenerife with a goal in the 81st minute.

There were not any options for Real Sporting at the second leg, as Valladolid quickly avoided any possibility of comeback with two goals in the first half of the match.

Source: Real Sporting Due to the conservation works of the pitch of El Molinón, the Trofeo Villa de Gijón was not played this pre-season.