Village Idiot

Hit the post twice thus far, we aren't winning this, are we?

This feels like an old school derby. Ugly, angry, and pretty crap footballing-wise.

First in a series of 3 Barcelona derbies coming up. This seems to happen every year, we draw a team in the Cup which we are set to play in La Liga and play them 3 times in a couple weeks. Last season it was Villarreal and Atlético.

http://www.francefootball.fr/mag/ballon-d-or/2001_1.jpg That's enough to class him as a legend, as much as you can disagree with him winning that.

James Rodríguez has apparently escaped arrest by fleeing into Real Madrid's training facilities after he was caught speeding 100 Km/h over the limit. Footballers are so dim

This article may not look football-related, but to me it shows that the huge contracts that have driven football during the past years are just not sustainable, and that sooner or later we're gonna see a nasty crunch. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/28/disney-has-a-money-problem-that-even-star-wars-cant-fix/?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fcard

Fair enough

Neville's notched just one win in 5 games, and that was against a Segunda B team. He seems obsessed with that 3-5-2 which is pretty alien to our football culture.

Wish we got some MLS dudes playing in La Liga. I get why most choose the PL, but surely the Spanish-American players should adapt easily?

Panenka? He slipped. Watching it on a dodgy stream? Seemed to me he had stopped on purpose, but yeah, he slipped. Watching it on the telly, but I'm working at the same time. I have a deadline tomorrow. FML.

That's more like it.

Another pitiful panenka pen. Neymar Why don't we just let Suárez take those?

He's done decently, but he really should be scoring more. Griezmann is pitching in, but Jackson and Vietto haven't really got going either and they need more goals from their strikers imho. The difference this season is that they seem to be getting goals from all over the pitch instead of one striker (Falcao, Costa, Griezmann) carrying them through the season.

That's probably the end of Canales as a top level player, I fear. Too many serious injuries and this one looked horrific, too.

Yeah, good goal that.

Bruma is looking like Pelé, and he's actually quite pants. Dunno what Real Madrid are playing at.

And who do you take out? The problem with Real Madrid is that they have like 1000000000000 attacking mids.

It's been shortened because of the Euros. We usually have games on the first weekend of January, anyway.

It's not, but a lot of people have holidays.

How long on his Chelsea deal? Might need a shopping window if there isn't much left on it. He would do very well at Villa, imho.

Atlético agreed a deal to buy Celta's Augusto several days ago. The window opens tomorrow, but Celta are playing Atlético tonight. Augusto - who's the team captain - has told Celta's manager that he wants to play this one last game for them.

Wish we did. He was poached (fair play to Arsenal, it's not like we don't poach loads of youngsters ourselves). Deulo has a clause, but I don't think he'll be back while Lucho is manager. Doesn't seem to like Deulofeu at all.

Sergi Guardiola, a dude that was signed to boost Barça B, who are doing poorly. It was discovered that he had written some pretty nasty stuff about Barça and Catalonia on twitter a couple years ago, and his contract was terminated. It's not the first time it happens. Depor also signed a dude in the summer and was also fired a few hours later, after it surfaced that he had bashed them on twitter. There's a bit of twitter hysteria in Spain at the moment. Quite a few public people (politicians, mostly) have left their posts after people dug up stupid shit they said on twitter before being elected.

So, transfer window! We have sold Alex Grimaldo to Benfica for €1,5m. The lad looked like a monster leftback in the making when he first appeared for Barça B 5 years ago, but sadly some very serious injuries have stunted his development. We are heavily linked with Denís Suárez, who we sold to Villarreal with a buyback clause. Lucho already tried to get him back in the summer, but we were blocked by FIFA (he was away on a loan at the moment, and it was a grey area). He seems to rate him, although with Arda Turan I'm not sure we need more AMs. Besides that, it doesn't seem we'll do much business this window.

Their whole defence has been built around that they weren't communicated in an effective manner of Cherisev's ban. I guess that's what they will try to argue in the regular courts. The FA argued back (and demonstrated) that they communicated it to Villarreal and the player, and that Real Madrid failed to do their due diligence when they bought him.