Not wanting to be pedantic, but Hernández Hernández should not have allowed that Messi penalty-assisted goal by Luis Suárez to stand against Celta! The play itself was of course correct, as performed by none other than Johann Cruyff several years ago, but Suárez was standing inside the semi-circle when Messi took the spot kick, which is against the rules. Still, Hernández would have deprived us of another anecdote in the Messi legend book if he disallowed it, and the game was over by then anyway!

Elsewhere Las Palmas felt themselves unlucky not to be awarded a penalty by Prieto Iglesias when the ball hit Sevilla’s Cristóforo on the arm. The locals were only one up at the time, and that could have brought the Canary Islanders back into the match. And later in the evening Levante were unhappy that Estrada Fernández allowed Adrián’s goal to stand, even though he bundled into keeper Diego Mariño, preventing him from stopping the ball entering the net. Again it was only 1-0 when it happened.

Finally there were protests from Real Madrid that Alvarez Izquierdo gave Varane two rigorous yellow cards and consequently a red in the match against Athletic Bilbao, and also pulled up Ronaldo and Carvajal for dubious offsides as they advanced on goal. As much as anything though there were questions from some quarters as to whether he should have been in charge at all, as Alvarez is Catalan, and he could be biased against a team from the capital! As if we didn’t have enough to be worried about... (16.02.16)

Name Games played Yellow cards Red cards Total
Del Cerro Grande 17 115 5 120
Iglesias Villanueva 16 109 10 119
Clos Gómez 17 112 7 119
Velasco Carballo 16 100 7 107
Gil Manzano 15 100 3 103
González González 17 96 6 102
Sánchez Martínez 14 92 7 99
Martínez Munuera 15 85 8 93
Alvarez Izquierdo 14 82 10 92
Estrada Fernáandez 16 82 6 88