Village Idiot

Tough call. I want to win the CL in Madrid, so I guess I would take el clásico. would their be riot's if u's won the CL in madrid? Yes.

Tough call. I want to win the CL in Madrid, so I guess I would take el clásico.

And there it goes

Márquez has cut his hair, maybe this will give him less air resistance and thus more speed

http://es.eurosport.yahoo.com/futbol/liga-de-campeones/2009-2010/fc-barcelona-rubin-kazan-343913.html :frantic:

Wasn't Sol injuried for this?

We are missing a few key players ourselves... Iniesta back in the squad though. Henry on the bench, good. Spineless twat would have scored an own goal, he seemed he still played for Arsenal last week.

Their run: Vasas SC 0 - 3 Sunderland A.F.C. (0 - 2 0 - 1) Sunderland A.F.C. 2 - 3 Sporting Clube de Portugal (2 - 1 0 - 2)

Think I have settled on wanting Inter to win the CL if we don't, mostly because of the Luís Suárez/HH connection and the massive jeering from Mourinho that would ensue.

Mou going for it. Lovely.

Did it ever go right, though? Never seemed to have much to his game apart from his height, and I don't think you need another tall guy.

sorry about that Nah, thanks for trying with our "´" things.

His name is incorrectly spelled in the thread title. It's "José" not "Josè".

Thought that was his default state? i.e. the news being him not injuried. I'm still nervous, mind, the way they equalised had shades of us versus Chelsea, where we didn't deserve the result and we got it.

schadenfreude = rejoicing in the miseries of others (word means "happiness of misery" in German)

FWIW you are on today's Marca international football pages, and I wouldn't be surprised you also make the other major Spanish sports rags. How many other promoted sides will make the news outside their home countries? You're still a big club. Congratulations

First game against West Brom was pretty important. Everyone was expecting doom and gloom after selling all your big names and signing no-one, the Leyton Orient massacre... and you got a result against a very strong team and could have even won it towards the end. I think that built the confidence of the side immensely.

Some unreal odds for Arsenal tomorrow. Tempted to drop a cheeky one, but it would be like tempting fate.

Madrid valued Gago at €18m this winter window, and Diarra on €20m past summer. So I'd say no. Think of the wages these muppets will be on, too.

Aye, that's a pretty cool thing.

Just clarify is that there total assists for the season or goal they passed to each other? Overall assists.

The Spanish FPA is going to call for a strike in two weeks in an announcement later this afternoon. Real Madrid - Valencia and the Barcelona derby would be the most rellevant games affected.

I was perusing sportinglife for other leagues' news and I was suddenly reminded that David Bellion still existed in this reality.

We'll have to agree to disagree then, since honestly I don't think there's interplay between Cronaldo and Higuaín. They just get the ball and run at the defense, and it's something that's been criticised. Think of how the Madrid papers piled on Higuaín because he didn't pass it to Cronaldo during the Lyon game, it's something they have been talking about all year. Their number of combined assists (6) is low compared to other partnerships (Zlatan+Messi have 15, Agüero+Forlán have 9, Villa+Silva have 8). They are just a pair of machine guns. Deadly ones. But they do get the results (in Spain at least), and since they are double and triple teamed often, it's easy for the other to find spaces. Incidentally, if you have a basic understanding of Spanish, diarioas.com has a very good stats repository for La Liga and the CL. http://www.as.com/estadisticas/

Incidentally one of my Real Madrid supporting friends (yeah I have those!) was telling me today, how "Higuaín is actually a bad finisher and needs a lot of chances to put them away", which is something I have seen said a lot, and it's f***ing bollocks. Guy's got 66 shots for 24 goals. That's an amazing conversion ratio. Compare that to Cronaldo's 152 shots for 12 goals from open play, Messi's 124 for 25 or Villa's 118 for 18.