Village Idiot

full second string or 5 or 6 dropped ? 7 dropped from their best XI, including keeper. Moyá, Miguel, Maduro, Alexis, Jordi Alba, Fernandes, Baraja, Vicente, Pablo, Chori Domínguez, Zigic Actually that's pretty much full second string. Only Pablo and Miguel from their best XI.

Valencia lining up with the second string. Villa and Silva dropped from the squad.

Aye, the years when we won fuck all.

Zlatan benched tonight, to increase djmattis pissedoffness at us.

Dunno, Racing have a disgusting home record too, tempting to go Gijon +1.5. Suspicion that Gijón will throw the game so a fellow northern team isn't relegated.

I get pretty anal regarding the amount of stripes and disposition, not that much different to a NUFC shirt I guess. The inter shirt looks tacky, looks like a Quicksilver tee with a badge strapped on.

Can't see Inter not scoring unless they get frustrated.

African Cup of Nations moved to odd-numbered years. This is going to be good for their teams that are also in the WC, having a major tournament just 6 months before it was quite disrupting, I think. That also means we'll have an ACN two years in a row (yay?), 2012 and 2013. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/africa/8685251.stm

They are not. If Roma and Inter end up tied Roma win cause of their best record in direct clashes, so Inter need to achieve the same result as Roma's. Yup, just googled it to make sure and was about to come on and correct myself until I saw your post. Last season it was goal difference i'm sure, so they must have changed it. They should get those tie-breaker games back

Great goal by De Rossi. First time I watch Serie A in years!

Rumor is that they will be lining up the second string like they have been doing the past two games since they clinched third, but I just checked their squad and is a strong one (Villa, Silva, Mata, Bánega... all in it). Since it's Villa's possibly last game with them, in front of their fans... they might go for it. Sorry for not being more conclusive.

One of the biggest ironies is to see all the Madrid press fawning over Javi Clemente this week, since Madrid press has always slagged him since his days of Spain manager, and Clemente hates HATES Real Madrid. Hopefully the irony won't be complete and we'll win anyway! So, so nervous. Marca's cover today with Clemente-Superman. http://estaticos01.marca.com/imagenes/2010/05/16/g1605.jpg

There's suspicion that Gijón - who have nothing to play for - may throw the game against relegation-threatened Racing. Both sets of fans are friends, and Cantabria's (the region of which Santander is capital) president has met with several Gijón supporter groups this week and has issued an appeal to them to "come and cheer for Racing". Gijón supporter groups have already made banners and scarves with both teams' badges and expressions of friendship. Gijón's manager Preciado, who's Cantabrian and spent part of his playing and managing career at Racing, has denied it.

Agree, but if that's atletico's new kit, It'll probably be based on the same template, no? Not necessarily, we have used the same template this season, but other years it has been different.

Ooooooops Teaches me to trust Sport, then. Pity since the shirt looks class. http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sport.es&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&sl=es&tl=en I should have suspected something was wrong when they said the shirt looks like our 1980s strips, since it doesn't look anything like them (they had much wider stripes)

English press doing us a favor as usual http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/worldcup2010/article-1278759/World-Cup-2010-FA-chief-Lord-Triesman-accuses-Spain-Russia-bid-bribe-referees-South-Africa.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/worldcup2010/article-1278763/WORLD-CUP-2010-Lord-Triesman--The-man-supposed-bring-sound-judgment-FA.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I don't know you, but it always makes me laugh seeing racists making complete fools of themselves, you gotta to be fucking thick to do that

Atlético's stripes are arranged differently. I admit the photo looks bad, but it's blown up from a low-res original. It is printed in Sport's newspaper edition of today, pretty sure they would haven't run it without confirmation from Nike or Barça, since it also includes a detailed description of shorts, socks and away shirt. They will look damn silly if it's a fake since it will be officially unveiled in few days.

Heh, he was linked to Madrid and Barça last season. Now to Newcastle (no offense intended).

Thd odds on Higuain to finish top scorer were around 40-50 few weeks ago. Down to ~20 now, wish I had bet some then. No chance imho. Maradona is pretty defensive and their group is rather decent, so no 6-0 to Saudí Arabia to pad out the goalscoring stats.

Pretty decent odds on El Fabuloso.

Looks like this is our next year's home shirt. Classic design. http://www.sport.es/vivo/recursos/fotos/foto_438/foto_438387_CAS.jpg

Aye, that was life or death for Mallorca, EL doesn't really cut it financially. Still a massively better season than anybody expected and hopefully their players will have increased in value and can cover some of that €60m debt.

Ah well, looking at the positive side of it, Sevilla will be a better bet to keep our league coefficient in the top three.

Awwwwww... great ending all the same. Poor Mallorca.