Village Idiot

It's funded by the sale of the Calderón, which sits on pretty valuable land. They paid part of the price using football tickets, though What they going to do with the Calderon? Always a shame to see an iconic, city centre ground fall by the wayside. Skyscrapers, of course. http://estaticos04.elmundo.es/assets/multimedia/imagenes/2014/07/17/14056221064359.jpg New stadium will be in the outskirts of the city, and closer to the white part of town than to the traditionally colchonero neighborhoods. It's gonna suck, but I guess it's the way forward long term. The Calderón was old and couldn't be upgraded given its placing near the river and atop a major road.

It's funded by the sale of the Calderón, which sits on pretty valuable land. They paid part of the price using football tickets, though

Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin has bought 20% of Atlético's shares for €45m. That's interesting. Atlético's finances are all kinds of fucked up (the success of the past years and ensuing big ticket sales have probably saved the club), so they need shoring up if they want to mount a continued challenge at the top.

Aston Villa are trying it now, with the signing of Carles Gil. He was a Valencia player but made a name for himself impressing at lowly Elche on loan. And you got Ayoze.

La Liga is more open, there are very few teams that set themselves out negatively every game, even if they are in the bottom half. Only Levante and Granada do that consistently (and Levante were pretty sexy when hitting a counter when they where at the top of their game 2-3 years ago), and with Caparrós sacked I expect Granada to become a bit more positive. That makes the league more watchable throughout, although not necessarily "better" in terms of which teams are stronger. I just find that there's an Alan Pardew mindset in a lot of teams in the PL, where negative tactics are seen as paramount to keep teams up, and the only way to keep teams up. Plus the whole "give thanks that you're in the PL" mantra. People are forgetting that we watch football to have fun.

With yesterday's win, and assuming they lose their game in hand against Real Madrid, Sevilla will be on 39 points after one half of the season. It's their best tally ever. Emery

Messi's been great on the wing again. Doesn't seem to diminish his impact in the game and makes him and Suárez harder to defend. Need to see it in more games.

60 points with Foster and Wisdom to come, which I don't expect to do much. Decent all in all.

He'd need to win the CL, to be frank. Thing is the current board will lose the election at the end of the season, and the new guys will probably bring their own man. Lucho would need to do exceptionally well to force them to retain him.

Loved us today. Funnily, this season we set ourselves to build a more diverse team upfront, but ultimately the team seems to be working only when we resort to the good ole "give it to the short Argie" tactic of old.

One of the good things from our transfer ban is that it looks like we will recall him early and cancel Sevilla's buyout option.

Arsenal putting on a defensive master class, not how I expected this game to unfold.

Would only last a season but it would be a pretty good season.

They are a shoe-in for the playoffs at the very least, they have done well this summer in assembling a team. Araujo is like Kun Agüero in that division.

By phrasing it as a question they can both either claim "we told you so!" if somehow they guess it correctly, and not lose face when eventually it doesn't happen. Non-journalism at its best(worst).

Las Palmas are doing quite well, but both Sporting and Betis are powering up the table after shaky starts. On paper these two are favorites for direct promotion, particularly Betis. No doubt Las Palmas will be in the running, though. They are the most fun to watch team in the division, too, lots of talent in the side.

A pleasure In other recent news from Spain, Granada sacked Caparrós this week. Sales of neck braces in the area to plummet. He's the single most negative and ugly manager in La Liga. Sadly he'll probably find employment somewhere, as he has a reputation of "getting the job done".

Their financial position is pretty fine. They got plenty of help from the local and regional governments to build their new stadium - which has prompted an inquiry from the UE - so it has hardly affected their finances. The sale of Herrera left them with a large profit, too. Being rich doesn't really help them that much, though, except when paying over-the-odds for basque talent.

They are in talks to get Lavezzi on loan, apparently. Don't expect any other moves at the top. There's talk of Ilarra going on loan to Athletic, but even though they aren't using him Madrid are short in that position.

45 with 5 to go. All Captain Costa though, everybody else is 1 or 2 bar Fàbregas.

Captain Costa

What was the Pardew fee, at the end?

Not from that season, but the 4-4 Arsenal is probably the craziest and most exhilarating NUFC game since I have been on here. Particularly since it came out right after Carroll was sold. It had it all. Even Tiote scored the equalizer. That's still his sole NUFC goal so far, isn't it?

He has been poor this season, although he's been good in the games where they actually booed him. Thing is that his overall play wasn't all that great last season either, but he justified it with a bunch of big goals. I think they play better without him, to be frank. He's really good at what he does, but very uni-dimensional.

Intradesting On the Ideye Brown point, he was a mainstay in the team until the World Cup process, when he was out of form, and had been playing at the top level for years. Why would he be denied a work permit? I don't understand the work permit system at all, tbh, at least in regards to football. Why are players with an EU passport more highly regarded than ones that don't have one? What does a player's work at national team level and the ranking of his have to do with his worthiness to play in your country? Under the set of rules Dyke proposed, someone like Wanyama wouldn't qualify for a work permit, unless someone paid ten million for him, so the big clubs can have another advantage. If their problem is the progress of British players being blocked, then they should focus on providing incentives for clubs to sign players with British passports under a certain age, not creating a bizarre system to arbitrarily limit the movement of foreign players. They are looking at the problem backwards on the EU passport thing its not so much as being highly regarded as the FA literally has no choice, any attempt to limit eu players would have the fa coming down on them like a ton of bricks for breaking eu law on freedom of movement. I understand that, but it is still silly that players from ~27 countries are free to move, while everyone else is filtered through this stupid and inefficient process. The proposed plan makes even less sense. I just want you to understand that under the system your FA are proposing, no Asian player (no one in this confederation is top-50) would be allowed to sign at any English club unless they cost ten million pound. What sense does that make? Spain doesn't have this WP system and our league has a larger amount of domestic players in the top flight than the PL. The FA is looking in the wrong place.