El Grand Clasico

David Villa celebrates after scoring his second goal.

With Real Madrid and Barcelona both making extremely good starts to the season in La Liga, the first meeting of the two Spanish giants this season was always going to be a heavily anticipated game. Monday night saw the first big test for an otherwise untroubled Real Madrid team and coach Jose Mourinho who had seen his team playing many of the smaller clubs in the league throughout the first part of the season. Barca on the other hand had played many of the bigger teams and had come out easily on top on almost all of these games.
Real went into El Clasico with a one point lead in La Liga coming from the first weeks of the season when Barca lost to newly promoted Hercules while Real could only manage a draw against Mallorca. Barcelona had home advantage in what was a pretty one sided game, and they took advantage of it after just 10 minutes when Xavi, the provider of many of Barcelona's goals this season, got in to the box to meet Andres Iniesta's ball and flicked over the out rushing Iker Casillas to give Barca the lead. Normal service continued for Barcelona, who had over 70% of the first half possession, when Pedro raced in from the back post to beat Marcelo to David Villa's cross from the left for an easy tap in 8 minutes later.
Much was made before the game about the rivalry between the current two best players in the world, Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, but it was the Barca man who came out on top. Ronaldo created little all game and he looked a very forlorn figure as he watched his team being taken apart by his rival for world player of the year. It was Messi who created the games next goal 9 minutes after the break as a jinking run into the centre of the pitch created a few yards of space which allowed him to play a 40 yard pass perfectly in behind the Real defence and on to the end of David Villa's run and the Spaniard finished it well by putting it past his fellow countryman in the Real goal to give his team a 3-0 advantage. It was the same combination that lead to Barca's fourth goal as again Messi found Villa who this time forced the ball under Casillas for his second of the game and Barca's fourth.
Despite Real's physical approach which resulted in 10 yellow cards in the game including one for Cristiano Ronaldo for pushing the Barca boss Pep Guardiola after he refused to pass the ball back to the Portugal captain, Barca got a 5th when Jefferen came off the bench to finish the game off when he beat Sergio Ramos to Bojan's cross in added time to send the majority of the 98,000 fans at the Nou Camp into delirium. The game then took a turn for the worse after Ramos took down Messi which sparked a fight that resulted in the Real Madrid right back being sent off for a push to the face of his Spanish team mate Carlos Puyol in what marred an otherwise brilliant game which left Barcelona two points clear at the top of La Liga.

Premier League (27/28th November)

Bolton celebrate after their 89th
min team goal was the equaliser
against Blackpool.

There was a record breaking weekend in the premier league last weekend with every single team scoring at least one goal for the first time in the history of the league. While Berbatov took the headlines with 5 goals out of 7 for Man Utd, West Brom won 4-1 away at Everton and Arsenal also managed four goals away from home when they won 4-2 against Aston Villa it was Owen Coyle's Bolton team that provided the best moment of the weekend for me. After going 2 goals down at home to newly promoted Blackpool Martin Petrov came off the bench to score a fantastic goal from the edge of the box by smashing a shot right in to the top corner. This wasn't the best goal of the game however as what followed could only remind you of the Brazil/Barcelona style of play. Mark Davies started the move and following several passes inside the Blackpool box Davies finished the move after Elmander's backheel was directed into Davies' path by a neat flick from Klasnic for one of the great team goals.

Martin Skrtel who scored a
goal at each end on Sunday.

The two Sunday games also provided good entertainment and after an under par Chelsea where held to a 1-1 draw at Newcastle following a mistake from Alex and Cech gifted the Geordies the lead. Liverpool then took on Spurs at White Hart Lane and got off to a good start. After a good first half performance uncharacteristic of Liverpool this season Martin Skrtel prodded the Reds in front from a corner after his initial headed effort hit Ngog before luckily falling back to his feet. Liverpool then had two easy chances through Maxi and Torres in added time at the end of the first half and another chance early on in the second half. In the second half however Liverpool retreated back and invited Spurs on to them and after Defoe missed a penalty after Ngog's handball, Luka Modric's run and cross resulted in Skrtel unluckily putting the ball into his own net to draw Spurs level. What followed was harsh on Liverpool as stand in captain Jamie Carragher had to go off with a dislocated shoulder (and is likley to be out for several games) resulting in an unorganised defence before Aaron Lennon capitalised on very poor defending by the reds left back Paul Konchesky. Things didn't get any better for Liverpool as the F.A cup draw pulled out an away trip to Man Utd which is likely to be the best tie of the round.

The Ashes - First Test

My sporting week started off on Wednesday night with a late start for the first Ashes test at the Gabba in Brisbane. It didn't go as well as I expected with Andrew Strauss falling to Ben Hilfenhaus after just the 3rd ball of the test match. After enduring another two hours of this lackluster England performance I'd had enough and I decided to head off to bed at 2am with the prospect of a highlights show to watch the next day. The next couple of days followed a remarkably similar pattern with a poor England performance keeping me up until 2am and a highlights show to watch the next day. Even thought there was little in terms of highlights for England the only bright sparks from an otherwise poor performance where good scores with the bat for in form Alistair Cook and Ian Bell and six wickets for Steve Finn in what was his first experience of the Ashes.
The turning point for England was the fourth day. Andrew Strauss made up for his duck in the first innings with a knock of 110 and his was the only England wicket to fall on the whole of day 4. Alistair Cook and Jonathan Trott then batted out the rest of the day with Cook passing his 100 and Trott passing his 50. Cook and Trott continued their excellent form in to day 5 in what has to be one of the best batting performances of all time by England with Cook eventually finishing on 235 not out and Trott on 135 not out, much to the delight of the travelling barmy army who easily outnumbered their Aussie counterparts for the last day with many Australian fans deciding not to turn up after this batting masterclass from England.
England then declared and put the Aussies into bat, with little chance of a result being reached, the decision came from Strauss and the England coaching team with the only thought being to give the bowlers another run out before the next test. Despite Ricky Ponting getting a quick fire 50 the momentum is firmly with England as we head towards the second test in Adelaide on Thursday.