The disciplinary committee threw the book at Celta's Vagner for his vicious kick at Diego Tristán last Tuesday, giving him a two match ban for the red card and one more for casting aspersions about Medina Cantalejo's mother. Luccin was also given a one match suspension when he too told the referee that he had the same opinion about the old lady. Now why would they say that?

Three red cards in this weekend's games, two of them direct for supposedly elbowing opponents. One went to Rayo's Ferrón, who has now been sent off twice since joining the club on-loan in the winter, and the other was for Varela, who had only just come on as substitute for Betis against Bilbao a few minutes earlier. Like Ferrón, he has now been red-carded twice this season. The other player sent off was Valladolid's Peña for a second bookable offence against Espanyol. Both Varela and Peña move up into our top five villains this week. Betis's Ito hit the ten yellow card barrier this weekend and will miss the next game, and six more players will also be sitting it out after picking up their fifth, Geli (Alavés), Luis Fernández (Betis), Soldevilla (Espanyol), De Quintana and Peragón (Rayo) and Aragón (Zaragoza). (11.02.02)