Village Idiot

I just swung by the newsagent's down the street, and "La Grada" - which is the regional paper that caters to Espanyol fans - doesn't even carry the Clásico result in today's front page, despite the fact that other La Liga results from yesterday are featured there. So bitter and small time, I love it

Benítez to get the backing of the board tomorrow or tuesday, according to most sources. Obviously they won't sack him so early, it would be Pérez admitting a mistake, and Pérez doesn't do such things.

Yup. I know the environment is incessantly toxic and full to the brim with delusion and egomania, but forcing out one of the very best managers of the past couple of decades was impressive even by their standards. It's seriously one of the worst managerial appointments I've seen. Benitez is just not a Real Madrid manager in any way, shape or form. I have no idea what they were thinking with that one. The narrative when they sacked Ancelotti was that he didn't rotate players and the team wasn't tactically drilled. Enter a manager famous for rotating players and putting tactics at the forefront, who also happens to be a local boy.

Ney scored 39 while playing alongside Messi last season...

Personally I think that Lucho just doesn't like Deulofeu and it would take Messi-esque levels of performance for him to sign on Deulofeu coming back to Barça. We might buy him back just to sell him to another club at a higher price, though. Madrid does that a lot with their players with buyback options.

FIFA ethics committee requests punishment for Platini and Blatter. http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/34889324

Casemiro should have played, nonsense benching your only natural DM. We cut through Madrid's midfield like butter.

Interesting to see if Barca buy Deulofeu back There's a clip on Marca today claiming we are planning to do just that, but it's probably just paper talk at this point.

Marca calling for Benítez' sack on the paper today, man I love that lot Real Madrid have such a poisonous and hysterical environment, nothing sustainable will be able to be nurtured there, ever. The way they hounded Ancelotti out last season is testament to that.

I think this the best game we've played since Guardiola left imho. I know we've won bigger games, but we never got such quite a dominating performance against a big European side, not even Bayern at home last season.

Munir has terrible composure, if he could shake that off he would be a very decent forward. His movement off the ball is really good.

Piqué wants to score the 5th himself so badly

Four forwards right now, Lucho is gunning for the 5th or bust He hates them so much since they got rid of him, bless the man

Fuck me sideways.

Warning shot by Messi.

:fwap: Totally surprised by this. I wasn't expecting Madrid to be so shit.

I always thought that Ney was "just" a very good striker, but certainly in the past 12 months he's made the step-up to Ballon D'Or contender quality. And he's still 23.

Why in the hell would he leave Barcelona? Money, getting out of Messi's shadow... there's also the matter of his troubles with the Spanish taxman (not that leaving the country would mean that they drop the case...)

Better get Neymar signed on a new fucking deal. 2 years left this summer and I'm already nervous.

Damn! Should have put that one away.

Casemiro is the only bonafide DM they have, and he has been dropped for this game so all the stars could be featured. That's the Madrid malaise in a nutshell.

Real Madrid have been awful so far. Running with no sense of purpose.

Favorite racist: Richard Wagner

I'm Spanish, I don't go to away matches