Village Idiot

I know I shouldn't, but I'm loving Chelsea trolling the remainder of the top 4 by loaning Remy to Leicester. Machiavellian stuff

Can't recall Borja Bastón until the end of the season. They are probably kicking their teeth at the moment but the lad has been better off on loan.

Which was the question?

Atlético have had a €45m bid for Diego Costa turned down. Jackson has been a failure so far, and they are really missing some more firepower upfront. Griezmann can't do it all.

This was discussed a few days ago. You don't go to jail in Spain for a first offence, if it's less than 2 years of prison time. The article is crap, I guess they didn't bother checking how our legal system works.

Villarreal are very well run - no questioning that, but they are backed by a Spanish billionaire. That's how they afforded to keep most of their squad when they went down.

Atlético always seem to lose their shit playing us.

Filipe Luís blatantly taking one for the team here.

Which one? Moussa.

That's ridiculous. They have conceded only 8 goals in the league so far. It's really silly. And we've scored 25% of those goals, in the only game where they conceded more than one goal this season. 14 clean sheets in 21 games.

The fact there's another one genuinely confused me for a while. Like Spurs kept loaning him back to Fulham for a couple of weeks at a time. When the news first broke I genuinely thought that Spurs had sold back the first Dembele to Fulham and were now pulling a Robbie Keane.

That's the kind of shit I do in FM just for the giggles, buying players with the same name

Huge game for us in a bit. Atlético have only conceded 3 away goals in the league so far this season. Unreal stat.

They surely intend him as a backup for Gayá, since Orbán has been a bit of a liability and Neville doesn't seem to rate him. Siqueira would probably be a better fit too if he wants to try 5-3-2 again.

VI has it covered. Only saw him for Atletico. Average player, which in other words would mean he walks straight into our starting eleven. Yeah, he hasn't been too good for them. But he was great before that. We'll see if he still has it in him.

Siqueira was great before going to Atlético, one of la Liga's best fullbacks while playing for Granada; he never seemed to get Simeone's confidence, and always looked nervous playing for them - which is understandable since his style doesn't fit Atlético at all. But it is a good signing if true. He's an attacking fullback, very spirited, always causes a great deal of problems going forward - both to the opposition and to his team.

The article someone posted from Secret Footballer laid out a too plausible theory about what's going on behind the scenes regarding Berahino.

The media are ruthless with managers here. Far more than in England, certainly. And sometimes unreasonably so. I suspect one of the reasons is that we don't have nearly as many former managers/players working in our football press as you do. Football people tend to be more protective of their own. And actually you're quite right in pointing out that our sports rags cover the same niche that your tabloids do. We don't have any successful tabloid in Spain, but sports press outsells regular newspapers by a wide margin - particularly among the working class. Best sports reporting is found in regular newspapers.

If such an anglophile TV show like El Día Después picks on Neville that means he's lost the press already. That said, really hard not to ask questions after such a dreary run.

Great goal.

Piqué scores 2-1. This should put the tie to bed.

Athletic players hate Neymar so much being kicked all over the place tonight.

Neymar having one of those "I'm gonna miss all my chances" days, too.

Celta puts Atlético out of the cup at the Calderón. If Athletic scores one more and puts us out, it will be a pretty accessible cup.

Looks like the Spanish FA president will get done for a small favor he made to two Segunda B clubs (he processed their licenses even though they were financially nonviable). It will be like getting Capone for failing to pay his taxes, but I'll take that.