La Liga Jornada 23

Lucky escape for us.. Sevilla played very well in the first half against our depleted team. Considering the injuries and out of shape players I am quite pleased by the final score. Sevilla just comitted the biggest mistake by setting back in the second half. Capel was destroying Oleguer and the Alves/Navas combo had Abidal against the ropes. Henry needs to be benched, utterly useless in the match, at least Oleguer actually participated.

Capel or Valdés MOTM

People must finally be realising that Valdés is a very good keeper and the days of his strange mistakes are (almost) over.

Jesus wrote:Puerta

Chevanton

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

Jesus wrote:Puerta

Chevanton

What, is he dead now? What happened?!?!

elbecko wrote:

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

Jesus wrote:Puerta

Chevanton

What, is he dead now? What happened?!?!

He played a blinder v Osasuna - turned a 1-0 defeat into 2-1 win with an assist and winning a pen but got injured in the last seconds of the game

elbecko wrote:

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

Jesus wrote:Puerta

Chevanton

What, is he dead now? What happened?!?!

His career as one of the worlds best strikers has finished before it ever started. R.i.P Chevan

Great result, Barcelona and Sevilla...now we have to make sure to take the three points tomorrow and extend our lead back to 8 pts.

Oleguerisntthatbad wrote:Lucky escape for us.. Sevilla played very well in the first half against our depleted team. Considering the injuries and out of shape players I am quite pleased by the final score. Sevilla just comitted the biggest mistake by setting back in the second half. Capel was destroying Oleguer and the Alves/Navas combo had Abidal against the ropes. Henry needs to be benched, utterly useless in the match, at least Oleguer actually participated.

Capel or Valdés MOTM

People must finally be realising that Valdés is a very good keeper and the days of his strange mistakes are (almost) over.

Has improved alot.

Hasn't improved, just showing more consistency and being on top form.

He has improved, and he didnt even have to change the colour of his hair in the process either.

Saying all this though, I still wouldn't trust him to hold my cat.

He is better than any of your Arsenal keepers, eventhough Almunia has improved a lot too..

Lucky, lucky Barcelona. They have Victor to thank in goal after yesterday's display.

Sevilla for top four .

If they can start playing like that away, they should be able to reach the top four easily.

The directness and speed in transition is really frightening.

BM wrote:He has improved, and he didnt even have to change the colour of his hair in the process either.

Saying all this though, I still wouldn't trust him to hold my cat.

Exactly. I've been impressed with Valdes lately as well, but in the end he will probably keep messing up in the big games.

Against Madrid for example, Baptsta scored a great goal. But the fact that Valdes stayed in his goal, giving Baptista kilometers of space to aim his shot as the ball bounced is simply dumb goal-keeping. A smart goalie would have come out to cut the angle.

I expect Valdes to at least keep committing this type of mistake, which if it's only that and no blunders then he'd become a decent keeper, but not ore than that. Certainly not good enough to play for a big team. Thankfully (for Madrid) his catalan roots will ensure that he stays at Barca until he retires.

Torrente wrote:

BM wrote:He has improved, and he didnt even have to change the colour of his hair in the process either.

Saying all this though, I still wouldn't trust him to hold my cat.

Exactly. I've been impressed with Valdes lately as well, but in the end he will probably keep messing up in the big games.

Against Madrid for example, Baptsta scored a great goal. But the fact that Valdes stayed in his goal, giving Baptista kilometers of space to aim his shot as the ball bounced is simply dumb goal-keeping. A smart goalie would have come out to cut the angle.

I expect Valdes to at least keep committing this type of mistake, which if it's only that and no blunders then he'd become a decent keeper, but not ore than that. Certainly not good enough to play for a big team. Thankfully (for Madrid) his catalan roots will ensure that he stays at Barca until he retires.

Baptista's goal was a fluke.. 95% of the time he would have missed the goal or the shot would have been saved Valdés..

And of course, no one has said anything in the news about Messi's huge dive which led to Keita's red card (replays clearly showed Keita didn't even touch him). There was also Henry's blatant offside goal a few weeks ago that gave Barcelona a win as well. And they say the refs help Madrid

Jesus Torrente.. you lot practically monopolise referee help.. your players can get away with anything.

This coming from the team that somehow managed to score TWO handball goals within 5 months. That kind of refereeing assistance in unprecedented in world football!

Ramos, Cannavaro and Diarra should be suspended until 2012 if there was any justice in the world.

And btw Sevilla got away with a lot of fouls yesterday..

Come on, those handball goals were not even that clear...especially Henry's in the CL. There's a reason the Madrid papers don't make a big deal about referee mistakes that have gone in our favour, and that's because these mistakes generally haven't affected the final outcome of the match. Unlike the ones Madrid get in their favour.

Maybe Henry's wasn't so clear, but Messi's? Ray Charles could have spotted that.

And partly why it may not change games is because Barcelona just hasn't been good enough to take advantage of them. For instance Espanol ended up tying the game with Messi's handball and last night you weren't good enough to score another goal against a 10-man Sevilla, even if only 10 minute were played. That doesn't mean that the ref screwups are more forgiveable.

we missed a massive chance in the 80th minute, so I don't know what match you were watching. You are being ridiculously biased.

The messi chance? All it needed was a slight touch and it would have been 2-1.

The ref was a bit card happy towards the end, and kept giving FK to Farsa when the players clearly won the ball, eg the Alves tackle.

Oleguerisntthatbad wrote:we missed a massive chance in the 80th minute, so I don't know what match you were watching. You are being ridiculously biased.

That has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Kas said that supposedly ref help for Madrid is worse because it changes games. I'm saying that this is irrelevant because it's up to the teams to take advantage of a refereeing mistake. I gave the examples of Sevilla and Espanol because these are cases where you got big help from the refs and still didn't win. If today for example Valladolid gets a bullshit red card in the 80th minute with the game tied and we take advantage of that and score another goal, it wouldn't lessen the Sevilla red card just because you didn't manage to beat them.

I don't see what missing a big chance in the 80th minute has anything to do with what I'm arguing.

I miss read your post. I thought you were writing that we would never be able to score against a 10-man Sevilla regardless of how long we would have.

kas wrote:Come on, those handball goals were not even that clear...especially Henry's in the CL. There's a reason the Madrid papers don't make a big deal about referee mistakes that have gone in our favour, and that's because these mistakes generally haven't affected the final outcome of the match. Unlike the ones Madrid get in their favour.

maybe not this season but i clear remember the 2005-2006 season which was over the top for soo many games. in the end you deserved to win the league anyway but there was alot that season. since then it has been at the level that all other top teams get imo. the same for us, but of course i would say that.
also torrente i would have gone with steve wonder but what ever.

FT Athletic Bilbao 1 - 0 Levante

FT Espanyol 1 - 2 Recreativo Huelva

FT Mallorca 0 - 0 Almeria

FT Osasuna 1 - 0 Zaragoza

FT Racing Santander 0 - 2 Atletico Madrid

Baptista puts Madrizz ahead

Offside - the initial pass.

That can't be??? The refs are always against Madrid

One could also argue that Robinho was interfering while offside when Baptista got the ball and scored.