The big talking point this weekend on the refereeing front was the penalty that Gil Manzano gave to Real Madrid after the ball hit Villarreal’s Bruno on the arm in the area. Ronaldo converted the resulting spot kick to level the scores, and Madrid went on to win. There were protests in particular from Barcelona as they had a penalty claim turned down earlier in the season when the same player clearly deflected a shot over the bar with his arm, but Gil’s argument this time around was that, although the ball hit Bruno at point blank range, his arm was “not in a natural postion”, i.e. he had it raised. You can imagine the hours of debate there were over that one!

Barcelona themselves had to ask Mateu Lahoz at half time why he had disallowed a strike by Luis Suárez in their match at Atlético, and as the TV cameras captured, they were told that the linesman had signalled hand ball by the striker. Not so clear in fact, but Barça went on to win anyway! Elsewhere Osasuna felt hard done by (again) after Oier was sent off by Clos Gómez for what the referee considered was a foul on Piatti in the area. If anything though it was keeper Sirigu who brought him down (and probably not even that), and the disciplinary committee agreed with Osasuna and overturned the red card. No chance of overturning the result however, and the damage was already done. And more controversy as well in the city derby between Betis and Sevilla, Del Cerro Grande failing to spot that N’Zonzi was offside in the build up to Iborra’s winner. Not the best of weekends for our men in black! (27.02.17)

Name Games played Yellow cards Red cards Total
Estrada Fernández 16 115 11 126
Gil Manzano 17 115 7 122
Martínez Munuera 17 89 4 93
Iglesias Villanueva 16 89 2 91
Clos Gómez 15 82 5 87
Jaime Latre 15 84 1 85
Melero López 14 79 4 83
Hernández Hernández 16 78 5 83
González González 18 79 4 83
Del Cerro Grande 13 75 7 82