Nine red cards this weekend, including three for coaches Gorosito (Xerez), Quique Sánchez Flores (Atlético) and Juan Ramón Muñiz (Málaga) for protesting. Muñiz's red card was downgraded to yellow on appeal, but the other two will have to sit out the next matches in the stands. Three players were sent off in the match between Mallorca and Sevilla, Negredo and Ramis in the first half for hard tackles, and Zokora for telling referee Teixeira Vitienes in English what he should do with his mother. Unfortunately Teixeira's command of the finer points of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary allowed him to understand what had been said, as he explicitly mentioned in his match report on the RFEF website.

Elsewhere Tenerife's Culebras left his side at a disadvantage after getting red-carded for giving away an early penalty against Athletic Bilbao, and Málaga's Jesús Gámez was also sent off late in the game against Espanyol for a bad tackle on Baena. Valencia's Alexis also got his marching orders for a second bookable offence in the Monday night match against Getafe, although the appeals committee accepted that the second yellow was invalid, and he was let off the one match ban. Alexis's team-mate Albelda will be missing next weekend though after he picked up his tenth yellow card of the season, and he will be joined on the sidelines by nine others who picked up their fifth bookings, including Cisma (Almería), Domínguez (Atlético), Lopo (Deportivo), Mané (Getafe), Benachour (Málaga), Martí (Mallorca), Arbeloa (Real Madrid), and Francis and Keita (both Xerez). (23.02.10)