Village Idiot

It wasn't like that when I was younger. We were a majority but not by such an absurd margin. Besides the fact our recent success will have brought us more fans, the thing is that Espanyol are a zombie club.

Mourinho has made a mess of Chelsea's right wing. Suddenly somebody like Pedro becomes available who fits the bill of a Mourinho player and can play there, so they outbid the competition. What's fishy about that? There's always gonna be competition to sign good players, doesn't mean the buying clubs are signing them to prevent others from buying them. I don't think there's a counscious "let's steal all the players" tactic by Chelsea because it's just not feasible. They just don't make a proper assessment of a lot of their signings because they don't give a shit about the money.

Chelsea haven't signed and "thrown away" any player that could have made a difference to any of their true rivals. The only one that appears to be good enough is, guess that, currently playing for one of their true rivals (De Bruyne). They just have a horrible transfer policy because they don't give a f*** about the money.

It is full of shit, don't worry.

The Spanish public survey agency made recently a study of club followings throughout Spain. According to them, in the Barcelona area it was something of a 25:1 ratio. There's actually more Real Madrid fans in Barcelona than Espanyol fans. Comfortably so.

Not many regions in the world will have produced a better striker than Alan Shearer. We've always been better with midfielders, anyway: Guardiola, Busquets, Xavi, Fàbregas...

Just Athletic Club.

Raül Tamudo retires. Comfortably the best Catalan striker of all time and one of Espanyol's best players ever.

Too soon. Voted Janmat merely going off last season's form, but others should be able to step above him.

The Daily Mail has a Chelsea loan map. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/02/00/2BE3FFA900000578-0-image-a-23_1441149688982.jpg

De Gea in talks to extend his ManU contract, according to "As". He's been told he won't play until he signs a new contract, and he doesn't want to put his place in the Euros in jeopardy.

Didn't they put a Ballon d'Or clause when they signed Di Maria too?

That said, it's been a record year for La Liga, and that's without Barça or Madrid having spent a lot for their standards. Both Atlético and Valencia have outspent them this season. It seems clubs are starting to spend the new collective TV contract money.

Would be interesting to see the record signing of PL clubs against La Liga clubs. Would imagine a fair few Championship clubs have bigger record signings than a number of La Liga ones. Stupid Sky. Off the top of my head, and some googling: Real Madrid: Bale or Ronaldo, depending on who you believe: €100m/€96m FCB: Luís Suárez €94m Atlético de Madrid: Radamel Falcao €40m Valencia: Rodrigo €30m Sevilla: Negredo €15m Villarreal: Soldado €16m Athletic Club: Ríos €12m Real Sociedad: Illarramendi €15m Málaga: Cazorla €24m Depor: Diego Tristán €18m Betis: Denilson €30m () All the rest are probably below €10m or even lower. Heck, Eibar famously have never paid anything above €500k for a player.

Rafinha Alcántara says today in an interview that he and his father (Mazinho) tried to convince Thiago to chose Brazil instead of Spain, to no avail. Brazil could certainly have used him.

Mayoral in their B team is highly rated. But he's obviously too young to make an impact.

To his credit, I think he was right this season. Even ManU have had to pay massively for an unknown.

Looks like that gamer fella is an actual feature http://s7.postimg.org/qyb5kv1bv/Captura.jpg

Luque was fantastic for Depor. Seeing his career after he left you, I think he just didn't have the mentality to fight against the tide. Lots of talk about him going on the p*ss and lack of discipline off the pitch once he came back to Spain and played for Málaga.

Been reading a Depor forum since the news broke, Coloccini is extremely well regarded there.

He'd get lost in the shuffle at Spurs, they seem to sign a dozen players for that position every season. I want him to be great.

Holy crap http://s21.postimg.org/pqbjuc4kn/Captura.jpg "Football Manager computer game expert"

Thing is that he needs to play if he wants to go to the Euro. But I can't see how things can work for him at ManU after this.