Village Idiot

Is Rafa getting any press in Spain VI? If so what do they make of it? Yeah. Take into account that the C'ship gets nearly zero coverage here, yet you get small weekly pieces about Benítez and Newcastle. They're pretty laudatory. You're getting more coverage under Benítez in the C'ship than in the PL under Pardew or McLaren, actually. But that's to be expected.

Zidane has had worse patches than Benítez had, but the problem is that Rafa doesn't have time for politics and Real Madrid is a very politic club. Once he had bad results - and he had bad results -, nobody (media, dressing room leaders, club staff) had his back. Zidane has had enough clout and a more appeasing personality to see off his bad streaks.

Iniesta down for at least two months.

Love when the games come so quick, in particular when you're looking at winning most of them.

He's scoring the goals I thought Mitro would be scoring at this level. I'll take it.

That was great When I read that Pep wanted to sign Bravo because he wanted a better ball-playing keeper I couldn't believe it. His distribution has always been awful.

For some reason Google has decided I'm interested in Aston Villa games and my Android phone won't stop sending me updates.

Johan Cruyff's autobiography goes on sale today. He finished it one month before dying. Definitely getting it ASAP.

Actually, I think that Ashley finding out that Pardew stiffed him would be one of the best things ever.

Sergio Araujo apparently overdid his celebrations after scoring the equalizer for Las Palmas against Real Madrid. He got in trouble with the police after being caught drunk driving. Faces up to 11 months in jail.

Dafuq happened here? After watching Barça game I checked out the score and you were losing and in injury time, and tuned off in disgust

Pregame commentators bigging up Fabian Johnson like he's the yankee Cafú.

Regardless of the score, Dortmund are such a thing of beauty. Love watch them play.

Pato scores for Villarreal. First league goal for them.

I would have never thought it, and it's still early days with plenty of tough games to test him, but so far Sergi Roberto has been a class RB.

After the Euros and spending the rest of the summer injured. He's still massively off the pace. Great result. Las Palmas are doing great this season.

Sporting de Gijón player Douglas (that Brazilian RB we mysteriously signed and then never played) has injured himself while sleeping on the team bus. In the ass.

100 years of history... The fact that most European leagues don't have a LC makes it look (at least to us in the continent) as a bit of a made-up tin pot trophy. Most other Europeanleagues don't have a FA Cup. They have a league cup (teams in the professional League pyramid). Is that right? Got a point there, that's something I have always liked about the FA Cup. Well, it's true in the case of Spain, not sure about other countries. Our short-lived league cup was only contested by La Liga teams.

100 years of history... The fact that most European leagues don't have a LC makes it look (at least to us in the continent) as a bit of a made-up tin pot trophy.

Simeone set the team up very well to nullify our front three. Most of our chances came from other players. I hope Messi's injury isn't serious, but his groin seemed fucked.

Neymar and Suarez both look lost for me without Messi. We still managed to create some pretty decent chances to win this.

Those injuries disrupted us for a bit, and Atlético grabbed their chance. We aren't grabbing ours...

And now Messi

Damn, Busquets injured.

He set La Liga's all time goalscoring record...