Of course I choose to volunteer to report on this game. “Oh yeah, Getafe, can’t be that bad right?” Mid-table, up-and-down, why not? Ugh. My reviewing prowess only goes so far, and it is definitely far too limited to cover all the minute aspects uncovered from yesterday’s 2-1 victory. So watch me fall flat on my face won’t you? Continue Reading

No whining. After two viewings of this match that many will call excellent, but not me, that’s the first thing that’s worth saying.

No whining. This was a match that we could easily have lost, even though we should have won it, a match that came down to moments, millimeters and men being men …. or not. It wasn’t a referee, so squash that talk. He let the players decide the match, which is as it should be. We are not Arsenal, or Chelsea. Guardiola said that he wasn’t going to harp on the refereeing, and neither should we, because the ref didn’t decide this match, wasteful finishing did, along with key players not showing up when they are supposed to.

But thankfully, Bojan Krkic did, donning his SuperBoy cape right about the same time as last season, when Zlatan Ibrahimovic was playing his way to the bench.
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This was the kind of match that it was for a while, a match that is a little bittersweet for this reviewer, because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I am giddy with rapture that we dispatched a gutty, gritty Arsenal side, who got in our face for that entire first half, before the match got a bit (okay, a lot) chippy.

But the Van Persie call was wrong, stupid and completely changed the match. It wasn’t how I wanted to win, because now we dispatch another English opponent, and the cries of “Ovrebo again!” will ring from the heavens, rightly or wrongly.

For those who have never been to the Camp Nou, let me tell you: With 95,000+ fans in full cry, you couldn’t hear a bomb go off in that place, much less a whistle. So when Van Persie was ajudged to have transgressed the (very literally intepreted) rules and sent off with a second yellow, it wasn’t how I wanted it to end.

Make no mistake, we were the better side. By light years. Zero shots on goal? Is that playing to win? No. Mind you, we had a little something to do with that.
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Um. Wow. Who ever thought that a win could be so massively boring and at the same time, fraught with uncertainty? But, thanks to a Real Zaragoza side that came into our house looking for precious little more than pride and to nick a goal off the counter, so it was. The old adage is that there are lies, damned lies and statistics, but not in this case:

Shots: 23-3
Shots on goal: 12-1
Possession %: 82-18
Corners: 13-2

Yes, they had two very good chances, either of which could have resulted in goals, but again, the Footy Gods are rather humorless at times such as this. Because you have to play the match if you want a shot.
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What a match. At the time I didn’t think so, mostly because I was sweating and kneeling on the floor at my office, physically willing our players to develop the necessary sharpness in the final third to put away one of the 914 chances they developed during this match, one in which a worthy opponent said “We are not amused, or impressed. Take that.”

And gave as good as they got. Championships are won …. villarato …. better lucky thanblahblahblah. Fact of the matter is that Valencia played one hell of a match today in a rare set of circumstances that found us slightly off song, facing a determined team at home, a team with talent that could put on one of our shirts and hold their own, no problem. It was a track meet almost from beginning to end, a match that saw us squandering chances, sometimes through excellent defense, other times through knuckleheaded selfishness, or just bad decision making.

But at the end of it all, we won in the Mestalla, a bogey joint for our lumbagoed leader Pep Guardiola. We won because as when Valencia came to the Camp Nou and rolled into the half with a lead, they gave us their best as we alternated between hanging on for dear life, and strutting proudly. And it’s now a 10-point lead, pending the outcome of tomorrow’s EE outing against Maulaga.

Wowl
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This is a rare one for me, in that it was a match that was fraught with complexity, that found us missing key parts of the engine that has driven our club to its status as one of the best extant — and yet it turned into a comfortable win that allowed us to punch the cruise control button, and ease into an important midweek encounter.

Who knew?
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