La Liga 2013/14 Season Thread

stinger wrote:I agree as well  

But I am wondering if they maybe should prioritize CL run over Spanish Title - the former sounds much more profitable and they are far away from decent financial situation. Not sure if they can do more damage in both competitions.

Honestly people have been asking this all the way but here we are practically to April and they are still there. They have a pretty decent squad and Simeone is being smart with his rotations (last night, home to Granada for example, he rested Raul Garcia, Mario Suarez, and Koke).

I think everyone has to admit this Atleti is capable of big things.

I think everyone think atletico deserve it. its much more of a team effort with them than the other two.

if we go in the last game and the table is like it was at the weekend. i would happily lose to them.

for the neutral observer the most interesting and exciting scenario would be going into the last round where both Atletico and Barca needed a win to be champions, and that a draw would not be enough for either team (in which case Real Madrid would win the league if they were to win their last game)...

So here are how the final 8 rounds play out for Atletico, Barcelona, and Real Madrid:

J31
Espanyol-Barcelona
Athletic-Atletico
Real Madrid-Rayo

J32
Real Sociedad-Real Madrid
Atletico-Villarreal
Barcelona-Betis

J33
Granada-Barcelona
Real Madrid-Almeria
Getafe-Atletico

J34
Atletico-Elche
Valladolid-Real Madrid
Barcelona-Athletic

J35
Valencia-Atletico
Villarreal-Barcelona
Real Madrid-Osasuna

J36
Levante-Atletico
Barcelona-Getafe
Real Madrid-Valencia

J37
Atletico-Malaga
Elche-Barcelona
Celta-Real Madrid

J38
Barcelona-Atletico
Real Madrid-Espanyol

Of course the fact that one or both of Barcelona or Atletico will drop points in the last fixture of the season gives Real Madrid some hope but because we have the inferior goal average with both, Barcelona and Atletico will have to drop points elsewhere also. Some tricky fixtures, I think as Super was saying in the RM thread, that Madrid have the easiest run-in.

and inbetween all of these, there are the CL quarters, the final of the Copa del Rey between Barca and RM, and possibly CL semis as well (certainly for either Barca or Atletico). Very exciting. The one thing that Barcelona have in favour of RM is that we can afford to draw a game and still have the league in our own hands.

Seen this:


Athletico have lost in their last 5 visits to camp nou  

Week 35 looks interesting, as well as the last week

this weekend should be interesting already, with the Barcelona derby at Espanyol, Atletico away to Athletic (!) and RM all but assured the 3 points against Rayo (?)...

Atletico and Barcelona both have to play Athletic Bilbao and Villarreal. Atletico have to go to Mestalla and Barcelona play away to Espanyol this week. Those are all potentially tricky fixtures.

Away to Real Sociedad is the last difficult match for Real Madrid, in theory.

athletico has the most diffcult run in, if they enter the last game  and are still in with a real chance of winng the league, then we should just had it to them

madrid has help from the higher ups as always, easy schedule.

Still think Madrid will win it, if you look at that schedule, Atletico will fail. Sadly. I think it will be good for La Liga that after a decade someone else wins the league. And quite frankly, they deserve it. Wont happen though.

If they can beat Athletic away this weekend, I can see them seeing it through. I can also see them saving energy in the CL should the first leg be a poor result. Providing they are still top of the league by then...

and they don't have the cup final to worry about. Should they both go through, RM and Barca play CL quarters two mid-weeks' running, then the cup final and the two following mid-weeks CL semi's, possibly even against each other. A gruelling schedule... 5 weeks of tough mid-week games ahead.

ALready 1-0 down to Athletic...

2-1 to athletico

i love me some atletico

That save from Courtois. If only he was born a couple of km's to the north, Holland would have had a good keeper.

Amazing that Chelsea keep loaning him out.

Well that's a big win from Atletico. All the pressure of topping the table and to go to San Mames and win against a very good Athletic side is the stuff that champions are made of. Fair play to them.

Barcelona of course get yet another fucking dodgy penalty. SOMEONE obviously wants them to stay in the title race.

Rayo are shit so we should have demolished them.

Hello, folks! It's been a while since the last time I posted on here. I will try to do it more often.

Real Madrid had no reason to complain in the match against Barcelona. The only mistake the ref made was gifting a penalty to Real Madrid. Sergio Ramos deserved to be sent off and Alonso clearly brought Iniesta down.

But today the ref gave to match to Barcelona. Mascherano committed a clear penaly and Neymar clearly controlled the ball with his arm before the Espanyol player handballed it.

It's a real shame because Atletico deserved to be three points ahead of both Madrid and Barcelona with 7 rounds to go(and they hold the tie breaking advantage against Madrid).

IMO Diego Costa regrets big time choosing Spain over Brazil. He says that he still feels he is a brazilian and that he will come back to Brazil when he ends his career. He clearly chose Spain over Brazil because he was afraid of not being called up by Scolari again, but he definitely would be a starter. Scolari loves players with that kind of behaviour, a hard working striker that is not scared to play against anyone. He is much better than any striker that played for Brazil over the past 8 years. He will regret even more if Del Bosque picks Negredo ahead of him or name Fabregas as a "false 9".

agree with the dodgy decision yesterday, felt a little embarrassed about it to be honest. Then again, it is true that these wrong decisions get made, I don't think they are premeditated and the only reason they don't even themselves out between the bigger and the smaller teams is because the bigger teams get into the opponent's box much more often.

That being said, what does Bartra have to do to be chosen ahead of Mascherano. It is not even so much that he offers more and pretty much always looked good (to me) when he's played this season, but Mascherano is a real liability now, on the ground, in the air, in his distribution, in his defending...

yeah bartra has improved massively this season, why tata stops him from playing his the same reason neymar continues to start despite his poor form

I must say I really like Neymar, but he still slows the play down, and is indeed in poor form. Could not believe some said he was our best player against Celta. He was appalling, despite his two goals.

toon h wrote:I must say I really like Neymar, but he still slows the play down, and is indeed in poor form. Could not believe some said he was our best player against Celta. He was appalling, despite his two goals.

exactly,same thing was said by many yesterday because of the pk win.

the amount of chances he missed or messed up, in that game way just too many, he also needs to simplify his game and pick his spots as to when to dribble and when to pass, and learn this is not brazil

Neymar will come good. He is playing out of position and he is still adapting to Barcelona. He's used to a more direct syle of play.

Agreed about Mascherano. Considering Puyol's health and the defensive problems Barcelona have had over the past two seasons, it's unbelievable that Barcelona didn't sign a defender last summer. They could've signed a pretty good one with the 40 million euros that Rosell shared with Neymar's father.

Neymar may well be affected by the negative publicity surrounding his signing, and the consequences within the club of the revelations that have come out since Christmas. As Messiah said, he needs to start doing the simple things better, quicker passing, get and gives with Alba, and choose to use his tricks more sparingly.

what a pathetic display against Betis! Especially from Tata. One of the things that most wind me up about him is his apparent apathy when things go against us. The same against Valladolid away when we lost. He just walks back and forth with his hands in his pockets, puffing up his cheeks. And the following week when we were beating Osasuna by 5 or 6, he was gesticulating all over the place. Man doesn't appear to have a clue when we were being run over by Betis - at home!
and you must feel for Betis, very very unlucky against us, this was not a game we deserved to win.

let's hope they were just thinking about the midweek game and are up for that. What a Jekyll and Hyde team sometimes...

holy crap koke's buy clause is just 32m euros, I hope you bastards don't try and buy him. or any other team infact.

I don't want to see atletico go the way off durtmond

messiah wrote:holy crap  koke's buy clause is just 32m euros, I hope you bastards don't try and buy him. or any other team infact.

I don't want to see atletico go the way off durtmond

I have to say I am totally in love with Koke. But he is bleeds Atletico. I would be surprised if they don't give him a new contract this summer with a more exorbitant buyout clause. He will never leave anyhow. He will be like Totti in Roma.

I hope torres thinks like that as well.

Saul is would be very good for them in the future too.

but koke and torres are just   .

didn't dream koke would be this good

messiah wrote:I hope torres thinks like that as well.

Saul is would be very good for them in the future too.

but koke and torres are just   .

didn't dream koke would be this good

Yeah I didn't either. Koke's ascent has been remarkable really. He will make a perfect captain as well once Gabi moves on.

You know, Paco Alcacer is very quietly having a very nice season. 6 goals in the league, 7 goals in EL, 1 more in Copa del Rey. The kid is still just 20 but he is really starting to live up to the hype (aka the new David Villa) he started getting when he was impressing with the Spain U19s. Hopefully Valencia can hang on to him.