Only three red cards this week, with perhaps the most newsworthy the sending off of Zaragoza's Aguado for a second bookable offence. Although the second card was for a fairly mild protest, the Catalan born defender goes in to the record books for setting a new record of 18 red cards in the first division, one ahead of the now retired Juanito, who played for Atlético Madrid amongst others. He is now four reds ahead of two other active villains, Real Madrid's Hierro and Sevilla's Pablo Alfaro (although Alfaro leads overall with nine red cards in the second division as well). "Dirty Javi", as he is known in the trade, claims that the referee misread a fairly innocent gesture directed at nobody in particular (well, maybe at Allah if Aguado really was kneeling to the East).

Valencia's Angulo also saw red after letting himself get upset about a hard tackle by Tenerife's Marioni. The Argentine striker fell like a stone holding his face as Angulo pushed him on the chest (??), and even his own manger Pepe Mel said that he did not want to see any of his players play-acting like that in the future. Hopefully that will be taken in to account if and when Valencia decide to appeal, and Marioni himself went in to the referee's notebook for wasting time as he was being substituted.

The third red card went to Rayo's Arteaga, who picked up a second yellow for a trip on Betis's exciting young winger Joaquín which even the veteran midfielder himself acknowledged was valid. The silly play of the week though went to his teammate Hernández, who decided on his own back that the ball had gone out of play when Denilson crossed in from the left. The French defender tried to catch the ball without waiting for the referee's whistle, and was penalised with a yellow card and a penalty. Television pictures later confirmed that the ball had indeed crossed the line, but that was no excuse for his actions. Some teams do make it hard for themselves at times!

Otherwise a whole host of players reached the five card threshold and presumably will miss out on next weekend's matches (appeals committee rulings excepted). These include Llorens and Téllez (Alavés), Cocu and Luis Enrique (Barcelona), Alex (and some reports say Fran?) (Espanyol), Roteta, Miguel Angel and Sandro (Málaga), Idiakez (Real Sociedad) and Unai (Villarreal). They join Mostovoi, who picked up a four match ban last week from the disciplinary committee for insulting the referee. (19.11.01)