Village Idiot

The Pozzos are selling Granada to a Chinese holding. Pere Guardiola (Pep's bro), will be the new managing director.

Another shady Mendes deal, no doubt.

The Deadpool one was already ridiculous, but that one had an excuse since it's a ridiculous movie

Weird furrin' name, must be a dago Love Kasabian.

Possibly? I have had little sleep.

No proper Barça fan calls the team "Barcelona", though. Still, Espanyol have never used the "Barcelona" part of their name. They don't care. Why should they? It wasn't part of their official name during most of their history. They are RCDE, we are FCB. NUFC does use "United" quite a bit though. They do have it though. They are Atlético, and proudly so. My Atlético friends have mastered the art of pronouncing "El Madrid" with the kind of phlegmatic disdain I thought only the English could muster. There's also Bilbao, they *hate* being called Bilbao. Their name is Athletic Club.

Leeds, Scunthorpe, Newcastle, Sheffield, Carlisle or any of the other teams named united? Which one?? The one universally known as United. Get over it. Nah, not having that you dog end, not on a Newcastle united forum. Why pick out United then? Should have questioned Real and said "Betis? Madrid? Zaragoza? Santander?" United = Manchester United. Newcastle = Newcastle United. Because you're not on a Betis, Zaragoza or Racing forum. You're welcome to f*** off to any of them though if you fancy. To be frank, in Spain practically nobody says just "Real" when talking about Madrid (except Madrid fans among themselves, ofc), precisely because of how many Reals there are out there. They are "Madrid".

We had a bunch of in-form strikers to choose from this year. Rubén Castro and Borja Bastón were in great form and scoring 18+. Bastón seems to have what it takes to go on to become a very good striker, I hope he doesn't get lost in the shuffle when he goes back to Atlético. Morata is an odd one, you watch him play and you see that he has it all, but he actually has a poor goalscoring record. I suppose he's the kind of striker that one day will have *that* breakthrough season and he will never look back. But he's the future, and Torres is the past. I think Aduriz is what the doctor ordered, we have never had a striker of his abilities that actually managed to score (Llorente and Negredo failed at NT level). It's the first time where we could have a working Plan B.

It's not really a fine. What happens is that the equivalent of the "facilities fee" in our new collective deal depends partly on how much you pack your stadium and provide atmosphere. In a perfect world this will give incentive to clubs to lower ticket prices. Somehow I doubt that will happen.

You have clubs not naming a full bench to avoid paying bonuses and reduce travel/accommodation costs. Of course reducing the game load is going to help.

That said, Sevilla's league performance these years has been mildly disappointing, since they haven't qualified to the CL through the league since Emery's been there (and they haven't won a single away league game this season, which is ridiculous). But he's made it up with the trophies he's brought.

did Valencia fans hate him? Thought they wanted to simplu push on but all they got was 4th or 5th. sacked him, then welcomed midtable mediocrity before last season They have come to regret the treatment they gave him, but he got lots of s*** while there, have no doubt. Back then memories of Valencia winning the league and reaching the CL final were still fresh in the fans minds, and he never got nowhere near that. But the reality is they were a team that had to sell their biggest stars (Villa, Mata, Silva, etc...) every season in order to manage the financial hangover of those bright successful years, and Emery still managed to compete.

Klopp's a loser, righteo. That's a new level of talking s***, like. You have to get to those finals in order to lose them.

I have never seen a manager so successful as Emery with such low stock among fans, by the way. My Sevilla friends despise him and wanted him sacked just weeks ago, Valencia fans despised him... so strange. Granted, his teams aren't the most entertaining to watch, but he isn't a Spanish Sam Allardyce either.

Pleased for Sevilla, looking forward the cup final this weekend! Cup games against them are usually big goal affairs.

Should I believe the Daily Mail? Should I do it anyway?

Morata has barely featured for Spain up until now, I can't see Del Bosque suddenly turning to him. But he's given up on Costa - who was Plan A up until now - so I guess he's ready to make changes. Wouldn't surprise me if Aduriz became our Klose either.

We have been dire these past two years. The talent is indeed there, but it isn't clicking at the moment. Expected Costa to be dropped, but I was surprised not to see Torres there after the form he's been in the past months.

Was reading today that Barcelona have apparently bid for Lemos? He's been absolutely brilliant for us since he joined in January, so calm on the ball and always seems to be in the right positions for cutting out attacks. Not sure if he's good enough for yourselves yet (granted there's not much backup competition) but fingers crossed the bid gets rejected because I'm not sure we'll find anyone as good as him for the €2m we paid to Rubin Kazan. Yeah I read that. Dunno about it though, after the football season ends the silly season begins; we'll be linked with 2000000 players until September.

Sevilla somehow have managed to finish 7th without winning a single away game all season. Commendable.

Betting fraud, apparently. It makes no sense to me. Losing at Anoeta was hardly an upset, and relegation is probably a bigger financial threat for those players than anything they could have reasonably got from that deal. But it's La Liga's chief officer who's laid down the accusation.

Betis midfielder Ceballos to a Getafe player, after beating and relegating them: "I hope you rot and disappear". Harsh.

If it happens, at least the English press won't be able to go with the "he doesn't have experience in this situation!" lark this time. Benítez does actually have a pretty nice record promoting teams.

Villarreal are being accused by the press of throwing the game against Sporting yesterday. Villarreal had already secured 4th place and Villarreal's manager Marcelino is a die-hard Sporting fan. There's always rumors like these around the relegation fight, every year. It's getting ugly. Rayo players were accused by La Liga's chief of throwing their game against Real Sociedad last week - which ultimately has relegated them.

It's what I say when I am about to do something I know I will regret