For an hour, this looked like the tidiest of away nights. For the final half-hour, it turned into something closer to survival. Real Sociedad walked out of the Estadio Martínez Valero with three points that they had earned twice over, the winner arriving in the ninetieth minute through Luka Sucic to settle a contest that had swung wildly from procession to crisis and back again.

Elche, having clawed their way level from two goals down and a man to the good, were left staring at the cruellest of full-time whistles. Second bottom becomes rock bottom. A performance of genuine defiance yielded nothing, and a night that promised their first win of a nascent campaign instead left them 19th, anchored to a single point.

Real Sociedad, by contrast, climb into the top half. Their evening was a study in how to waste an advantage and then rescue oneself anyway — reckless in the middle, ruthless at the end. Job Ochieng was central to all of it, a goal and two assists making him the tormentor-in-chief on a night that will linger long in the memory of both dugouts.

Two-goal cushion

The visitors settled quickly and struck early. In the eleventh minute a corner delivered by Carlos Soler dropped for Ochieng, who lashed a right-footed shot from a difficult angle on the right into the top right corner. It was a finish of nerve rather than luck, threaded into the smallest of spaces, and it gave Real Sociedad a platform they seemed determined to build upon.

By the half-hour they had doubled it. Ochieng turned provider, feeding Yangel Herrera on the right side of the box, and the Venezuelan swept a right-footed effort low into the centre of the goal. Two-nil, comfortable, and Elche's early-season fragilities laid bare again — a defence that had shipped goals in every direction now leaking two more before the break.

The Martínez Valero grew restless. Elche had shown flickers going forward but nothing to trouble a visiting side content to keep the ball, keep their shape and keep the scoreboard ticking their way. At the interval the contest felt all but decided, the only question the margin of the eventual victory.

The tide turns

Football, though, rarely reads the script. On 64 minutes Jon Martín was shown a red card, and the complexion of the evening changed in an instant. Real Sociedad, so comfortable, were suddenly a man light and a good deal more anxious, and Elche smelled the blood they had been denied all night.

Three minutes later they had a way back in. Víctor Chust laid the ball into the path of Thomas Lemar, who steadied himself outside the box and curled a right-footed strike into the bottom left corner. It was a moment of quality to match the occasion, and it lifted a crowd that had spent an hour in sullen frustration.

The equaliser followed on 74 minutes, and it was scrappier but no less precious. Tete Morente worked the ball across and Fer Niño pounced from very close range, bundling it into the bottom left corner. Two-two, ten men against eleven, and the momentum entirely with the hosts. Elche, so passive for so long, now threw themselves forward in search of a winner they had done nothing to deserve at half-time but everything to earn since.

Sucic's dagger

The finale belonged, agonisingly, to the visitors. As the game tilted towards Elche, Real Sociedad found one last surge, and once again it was Ochieng at the heart of it. His pass released Sucic in the centre of the box, and the substitute took a touch before drilling a left-footed shot into the bottom left corner. The ninetieth minute. The daggers rarely come later.

It was a goal that summed up the visitors' evening: they had defended chaotically, conceded twice, thrown away control, and yet in the decisive instant they retained the composure to strike. Ochieng's third involvement of the night was as clinical as his first, the through-ball weighted perfectly, Sucic's finish emphatic. From the depths of a wobble, three points salvaged.

For Elche the sense of injustice was palpable. They had turned a contest, dominated its final quarter and produced the character their opening weeks had lacked, only to be undone at the last. Character, as their manager knows too well, does not appear on the table. Points do, and they have precisely one.

Where it leaves them

Real Sociedad move to seven points and ninth, a top-half berth that flatters a night of self-inflicted alarm but rewards a refusal to fold when reduced to ten men. Two wins, a draw and two defeats speaks of a side still finding its rhythm, but there is enough here — Ochieng's menace, Herrera's drive, Sucic's ice — to suggest the platform for something steadier.

Elche's plight is starker. Nineteenth, a single point from four matches, five scored and twelve conceded: the numbers tell of a team leaking goals faster than it can trouble opponents. The manner of this defeat, snatched away after so promising a recovery, may sting more than the earlier, tamer losses. Belief is a fragile currency at the bottom of the table.

Yet there was something in that second-half revival to cling to. A side capable of overturning a two-goal deficit against a well-drilled opponent is not devoid of fight. The task now is to summon it earlier, before the hole is dug, and to defend the leads they scramble their way towards. On this evidence they can play. On this evidence, too, they must learn to finish what they start.