No major scandal on the refereeing front this weekend, the main issues centring on possible penalty decisions. Neymar in particular was in the news after he had two reasonable looking appeals turned down by Fernando Teixeira Vitienes against Valladolid, and after provoking the sending off of Celtic captain Scott Brown midweek (and the stick he got from the Scottish crowd afterwards), there was much debate about whether he was a "diver" or not. Teixeira obviously felt that he had exaggerated, but as Barça won 4-1 anyway the discussion was fairly academic.

Málaga possibly had a better claim for a penalty against Osasuna when the ball hit Oier on the arm near the end, but Gil Manzano said no, and Schuster's side ended up losing 0-1. Three spot kicks were awarded, two converted by Viera (Rayo) and Banega (Valencia), and one by Diego Costa saved by Celta's Yoel, but there were several other claims this weekend which were rejected, for example for hands by Levante's Héctor against Real Madrid, and for a possible foul by Elche's Lombán on Espanyol's Sergio García. Whoever would want to be a referee? You can only at best please half of the people half of the time! (08.10.13)

Name Games played Yellow cards Red cards Total
Fernández Borbolán 6 33 4 37
Alvarez Izquierdo 5 31 2 33
Teixeira Vitienes, J.A. 4 30 2 32
Mateu Lahoz 4 28 2 30
Muñiz Fernández 3 25 3 28
Iglesias Villanueva 4 27 1 28
Velasco Carballo 3 25 2 27
Pérez Montero 4 25 1 26
González González 5 24 0 24
Clos Gómez 5 22 1 23