Village Idiot

He's pretty big on us not getting "stale", I agree that 433 works and we have a much better shape against good teams with it. But 3-4-3 gives a lot of options of players making runs from midfield (Cesc has been excellent on that role, for example) against teams that bunker down, so it has its uses. Just not against the likes of Valencia away.

Also, I wouldn't get my hopes up on Real Madrid and Barcelona not ending up with 20+ points over third place. Both teams also started slowly past season, dropping a similar amount of points in the first weeks and ended up with a record distance over third. Truth is that they both need time to get on form, given that their preseasons are disrupted by the US/Asia tours (no other Spanish team does them) and the international breaks at the beginning of the season hurt them too, as they lose 90% of their squads to NTs.

Tried to change too much which didn't really need changing in the first place unfortunately. Aye, things haven't really gone well there. Always the same story, they look pretty good on spells but end up losing.

Kudos to Emery, I have never rated him much (cracking fellow, mind) but he outsmarted Pep quite clearly yesterday. Gotta say it was a bit too daring to line up 3-4-3 away against a team of Valencia's quality, but they raped us through the flanks and could easily have been 3-1 up at HT. But we regained control of the game after we switched back to 4-3-3. Fair result and a cracking game

With Higuaín seeing so much bench since he came back from his injury, and Neymar apparently coming soon, he probably will be on the move. Wonder where he could end up in.

According to most reports, he'll be available tonight.

Valencia - Barça should be a cracker, a pundit said today that they - on average - are the team with highest possession against us in all the league (56% vs 44% according to him), and they always give us trouble at their place.

1-0 close win, then?

Ramos dropped and Varane starting for Real Madrid instead. Di Maria benched too. Mou likes to point fingers in more than one way, it seems.

By all accounts he's an excellent fella outside football, most people I know that met him during his time at Barcelona, some of whom he still has contact with, tell me that. He's just über-competitive and will use anything at this disposal to achieve success, hence his antics.

It isn't, off the top of my head we had 84% against Panathinaikos last year. Jesus Christ Actually I was wrong, according to Goal.com it was 86% http://soccernet.espn.go.com/report?id=307848&cc=5739

It isn't, off the top of my head we had 84% against Panathinaikos last year.

Marca is claiming that Madrid have closed the €60m signing of Neymar, and he has passed a medical in Brazil. It won't be completed until after the London Olympics.

Yeah, it's the norm. It's to prevent a few dickheads form cheering throughout it as the music sounds and drowns their voices. Great stuff from Madrid yesterday, that's Mourinho's "30 out of 30" plan finished pretty early. We have couple very tricky fixtures this week though, Valencia away on Wednesday and Atlético (who were impressive yesterday) at home on Sunday.

The Spanish senate has approved the modification to our bankruptcy law to close the loophole that allowed clubs in administration to dodge punishment by sports' governing bodies. That will really help cleaning up the slate in La Liga, with clubs like Zaragoza, Rayo, Racing etc... staying up despite owing money left, right and centre while clubs like Depor who went through a rough financial adjustment period get relegated because they follow the rules.

http://www.goal.com/en/news/1716/champions-league/2011/09/15/2666161/fans-whistle-me-because-im-good-looking-rich-and-a-great :lol: what a t***, couldn't believe it myself that he actually said that until I saw the clip on the Spanish news.

Madrid's is their strongest XI, actually (at least Mou's most often used XI this season).

De Gea rotated. Rotating your GK for a CL opener away against quite decent opposition is a big move, imho.

Wonder how many of those plastic seats are due to the red side of Manchester playing the exact same time.

Well, yesterday sucked but doesn't actually change much group-wise (we would have needed a win at San Siro anyway to secure first place). Just hope it puts an end to Busquets as CB (he's woeful there) and puts some fire in the belly in our players, they stopped playing as soon as we went up 2-1, and Milan were woeful.

Busquets - Mascherano at CB, yay. I want to line up a proper defence

Actually, I wasn't meaning RM/Barça games when I typed that. I had just watched the tremendous borefest of a game that put our reportedly 3rd and 5th best teams (Valencia - Atlético), and the attitude both teams displayed in the pitch, Emery going with defensive chances when leading 1-0 at home (FFS), Atlético not committing more players on the break when they were one down... I think it has reached the point where there's so much at stake financially that teams are shit scared of taking too many risks anymore. And yes, we got very complacent against Real Sociedad, although for some reason Pep has never won this fixture (the one after the first international break).

Saw Roma lost. Not a good start for Luís Enrique so far, but I hope he gets time.

Strange, but I'm enjoying watching Liga Adelante more than proper La Liga this season. Most teams in the top flight are being very morose/scared so far, while there's a bunch of goalfests and comebacks in our second division.

Guardiola been awarded the Catalan equivalent of the Congressional Gold Medal. He's going to be our president