Back on FM13…back on the road

I took roughly a month off Football Manager after my hissy fit. I’ve now started a new journeyman game with the intention of not cheating at all and letting the game do what it wants.

This is the first time I’ve started unemployed on FM13 – I started one on FM12 where I ended up managing 1981 Cup Winners’ Cup runners-up FC Carl Zeiss Jena, at the time in the 3. Bundesliga (but since relegated, thus becoming unplayable on FM13). Unfortunately the game fizzled out quite quickly. However, this time I am intent on sticking by it – no cheating, and staying with this game for a long time.

I decided to start with a few leagues selected from south-east Europe alongside the usual ones:

Brazil – 3 tiers
Bulgaria – 2 tiers
Croatia – 2 tiers
England – 5 tiers
France – 2 tiers
Germany – 2 tiers
Greece – 2 tiers
Italy – 3 tiers
Portugal – 3 tiers
Romania – 2 tiers
Scotland – 2 tiers
Serbia – 2 tiers
Slovenia – 2 tiers
Spain – 2 tiers
Turkey – 2 tiers

The aim is, starting with my reputation set at semi-professional player (though for the purposes of establishing a realistic and fun narrative, I’m thinking of myself as a Villas-Boas-type figure who has worked as a scout for a few years while taking my coaching badges), to learn my trade and build my reputation in south-east Europe, to the point where I can either return to England at a high level or enter one of the other top leagues. South-east Europe is that it generally has a good standard of football coupled with low wages compared to England, with a lot less work to do to reach the top of that country’s league.

In the event, I was offered 4 jobs straight away – Lincoln City in the Conference, Mirandela in the Portuguese Second Division North (despite the name, it’s the 3rd tier of Portuguese football), and RFK Novi Sad and FK Mladost Lucani in the Serbian First League (the 2nd tier of Serbian football). I quickly rejected the first two as it was the two Serbian clubs who offered me the highest salary and bigger budgets. After waiting for any further job offers (of which there were none) and a bit of research into the clubs, I chose Mladost.

FK Mladost Lucani are based in the town of Lucani in western Serbia. Unlike Novi Sad, they have played in the SuperLiga – they were regulars in the top flight through the mid-1990s, and most recently they won the First League in 2006-07, spending 2007-08 in the top flight before immediate relegation due to financial difficulties. In 2011-12 they just missed out on promotion again after finishing 3rd, finishing 8 points behind 2nd-placed Donji Srem. But this season, in reality, has been more difficult for them – they’re currently attempting to fight off relegation to the Second League. Their most famous player ever is Red Star defender and Montenegro international Milan Jovanovic (not to be confused with the former Liverpool midfielder, who is Serbian).

The First League is considered roughly between the English Leagues One and Two in standard. There are 18 teams who play each other twice, with the bottom 6 (!) relegated. The top 2 are promoted to the SuperLiga, which has long been dominated by the two giants of Belgrade, Red Star and Partizan – since the formation of an independent Serbian league in 1992, Partizan have won 14 titles (including the last 6) and Red Star have won 6, with only FK Obilic, champions in 1997-98 with backing from paramilitary leader Arkan, able to break their stranglehold, and even they have dropped way down the leagues in the years since. In fact, only one other club, Vojvodina in 2008-09, have broken into the top 2. This is Old Firm-esque dominance, and that’s before we even get to the matches between the two, known as the Eternal Derbies.

But for now, I don’t have to worry about facing either side. Getting out of the First League is the immediate aim, which seems a realistic proposition – the squad is largely made up of young Serbians with plenty of potential, and I was given a large wage budget, adding £2,000 a week on top of what the club was already spending, which, when considering the average wage at the club is roughly £150 a week, is very useful for adding depth. The only restriction is therefore the limit on 2 foreign players in the 18-man match day squad – helpfully one of those managed to obtain Serbian nationality, so I was able to add another.

In total I added 7 players on free transfers and loaned another youngster from each of the Belgrade giants. The initial focus was on signing a left-back, and this hole was filled by Uganda international Joseph Kizito, who also holds a Serbian passport from his years at Vojvodina and Partizan. At the age of 30, I was happy to pay the maximum-allowed £500 a week to bring him in. As back-up, I loaned highly-rated Partizan teenager Stefan Milosevic. I also added experienced attacking midfielder Ivan Jovanovic and a couple of other back-up players before the start of the season. My first choice formation, due to the lack of good wingers, was 4-1-2-1-2 with the option of 4-5-1

Pre-season went well, including a 2-2 draw with Sparta Prague. My first First League match was at home to pre-season title favourites Napredak Krusevac. Despite a red card for my key midfielder Marko Avramovic and the loss of my star striker Chad international Misdongarde Betolngar to injury, I held on for 1-1 draw. Betolngar was ruled out for some time, so I needed to add more quality up front – I signed Brazilian target man Washington, who made an immediate impact in my next league game against Banat Zrenjanin by scoring 2 goals. A 3-0 win against Banat was followed by a 2-0 win over Radnicki Nova Pazova, which put me 2nd in the table. I also won my first Serbian Cup match during the same period, taking me into the final qualifying round – the board’s aim was to make the first round proper.

The next home match against Kolubar Lazarevac saw the main highlight of the season so far – I fell 1-0 behind in the first half and didn’t look like scoring, but substitutions made in the second half inspired goals in the 80th and 81st minute to snatch a dramatic win, and in the process leapfrog Borac Cacak to go top for the first time. A few days later, a second Serbian Cup tie win put us into the first round, with the opportunity of being drawn against one of the big boys.

We’ve had a few injuries, and Kizito is just heading off on international duty with Uganda, but having brought in a few more fresh faces towards the end of August, including young Red Star winger Nikola Karaklajic, we have plenty of capable cover, and enough talent to rotate where necesssary. I have a good feeling about this squad.

If we do get promoted, I have my sights set on eventually challenging Partizan and Red Star for the title – even if either of those clubs make an offer for my services, I want to have at least one serious attempt at trying to break their monopoly at the top of Serbian football. With the young talent in the squad, I think I have a great platform to work from.

Why I’m fed up with Football Manager

Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

I know football can be strange at times. I know results go against the form book all the time. I know teams have bad days where they just can’t get going. I know managers are often powerless in the face of poorly-performing players. But I’ve seen enough – Football Manager 2013 is impossible to handle without effectively bludgeoning it into submission.

Since buying the game when it first came out as a beta, I’ve started a lot of careers on there as usual. I am usually inclined to start with good teams, or at least teams with money – it’s difficult to turn around teams with poor squads and no money quickly, and I like a short-term game because they usually don’t hold my attention for very long before I start another career.

Also I usually take quite a long time in careers, either searching for players, playing all the friendlies, spending a while on tactics, and the aforementioned cheating – restarting matches if I feel that a poor result wasn’t justified. As I have shorter careers, I perhaps take individual matches more seriously than if I had a 20-season career, so I am more inclined to restarting matches. I try to avoid this where I can but sometimes I can’t help myself – I don’t like losing, especially unfairly, and the problem is once I restart one match, inevitably it leads to a second, third, fourth and eventually any match where I don’t win. And with this year’s version, I think I’m cheating a lot more, and it’s because I feel like I’m being cheated a lot more.

The reason? It’s virtually impossible to build a long string of good results, and it’s especially noticeable when you have a very good team.

A couple of months ago I started a game as Villarreal, whose squad is by far and away if the best in Spain’s Segunda Division – the players they retained are mostly Primera Division quality, and there is a big gulf between the two divisions, especially in the game which does have a tendency to exacerbate the difference.

But once into the league season, I found my team having plenty of lacklustre performances. Teams they should have been thrashing they were either meekly scraping wins against or even drawing with or losing to. It was incredibly frustrating – I had the players, I had the right tactics, the players were motivated by my press conferences and initially had positive morale. But then they’d just go onto the pitch and be really sloppy for no reason – passing was slow, the players would give the ball away easily and struggle to get it back, they weren’t creating chances, they weren’t chasing loose balls or hassling opposition attackers. It was as if they didn’t care.

Soon results were getting out of hand – the inexplicable draws in the middle of a very good run lowered morale, which led to defeats, and we started to slip way behind early pace setters Las Palmas, whose team was much less talented than mine and yet beat me comfortably. I had no depth beyond my excellent first choice players, and no money to spend on changing that, but the expectation was to win the league, which looked very unlikely. So after only 2 or 3 months of the season, I bailed – I applied for a few jobs and ended up taking the Sunderland job.

But I was determined to crack Spain, so I started a new career, beginning at Atletico Madrid. I built a strong side in the summer, and almost immediately beat Barcelona 4-0 in a ridiculous game at home. I went on a great run which put me top, but gradually 1 or 2 weak performances started creeping in. This time, I couldn’t hold myself back – I restarted one or two matches, and inevitably this led to more. By the end of the season it felt like I was restarting every single match, so keen was the game to make me trip up. But I couldn’t afford it as Barcelona and Real Madrid’s relentlessness meant I was always only a defeat from being reeled in, let alone considering the effect the loss of confidence would have. I won the league and everything else I entered, but it felt hollow.

So I started another career, this time at Luton Town, who have the best squad in the Conference in the game by a long way. I built on top of the squad still further with free loanees, and ended up with a team that FM was telling me was good enough to compete in League One, let alone League Two or the Conference.

And yet once again, the team became consistently lacklustre in games – that same sloppiness and lethargy as happened with the Villarreal team, despite the fact that the game was telling me that my team was better than the rest of the teams in the Conference and was high on confidence and morale. I’m not necessarily just talking playing against good teams here – I was playing some really bad ones that were struggling to pick up a win from anywhere and low on morale, and I was playing them at home, but I was struggling to beat them.

After just two matches I had started restarting games, which was incredibly annoying as I’d just started afresh in the hope that I wouldn’t. After about 15 matches, I’ve given up altogether – it has become virtually impossible to win a match without several attempts, which means it’s impossible to sustain form over anything longer than about four or five matches and that I’ll inevitably lose the lead of the league. This is not logical – I know football has a tendency to throw up surprise results, but the way leagues pan out is that if there is a team that is far superior to the rest of the teams in the league, they sustain good form for the whole season and win the league by a long way virtually every time. Even a team like Manchester United in the Premier League this season can win by a long way without being that much better than the rest of the teams in the league – this is the reality of football.

I initially thought my struggles with Villarreal were specific to that club but the fact that it has happened again with Luton shows that it’s not a coincidence. I’m happy to accept a defeat if it’s deserved but the way I see it is I don’t deserve to be losing these matches in this way – I’m doing everything right and yet the players are just deciding to play terribly, while the opposition are almost super-human, and everything the game is telling me suggests it should be the opposite. Plus after that, a defeat will almost certainly lead to an extended run of bad form, which means you can’t afford to lose – and yet the game isn’t letting you win.

The problem as I see it is that a lot of these matches seem at least partially pre-ordained before you’ve even started, in terms of form, team talks and press conferences answers, and I don’t believe that’s fair, especially as a lot of this is hidden – as far as the user is concerned, if morale is high in the team it shouldn’t be a problem, and yet the game may have already determined that the players are going to play badly in the next match. How can you work around this?

With FM12, I noticed that if I had a very good side, the way it would usually stop me winning was the other team parking the bus, or the opposition goalkeeper having the day of his life. Now I can understand having 60% possession and 20 shots but drawing 0-0 once in a season, but when it happens a few times in a row it just looks daft. And it’s very frustrating. This year, though, FM13 has gone even further – if it wants you to fail, it makes all of your players rubbish, instead of just the strikers, and all of the opposition players brilliant, instead of just the goalkeeper.

The way matches are effectively pre-ordained to make one side sloppy and the other side brilliant just makes the matches look ridiculous and futile, as it suddenly becomes very difficult to actually do what a manager does best – manage and organise the team in a match. Essentially if the game has said “sorry pal, you’re going to lose to Nuneaton”, you can play them in a 2-3-5 or 5-3-2, or use Attacking or Contain, and it won’t make a jot of difference.

And yet the “opposition manager”, controlled by the computer, can seemingly change the whole game as and when it feels like it. For some reason, if a particular change by either manager changes the pre-ordained result, it doesn’t just make the manager’s team play much better – it makes the other team play much worse. Despite being a genius, Jose Mourinho cannot magically make the opposition players go from being sharp and quick to sloppy, ponderous and lethargic after bringing on Luka Modric. If the match changes after a change like that, it’s because of the tactical implications, not because of the mentality. I can understand the players panicking after a change but not suddenly becoming slow and stupid. It’s just totally illogical.

The Football Manager games have always been on the premise that a match is a competition between the two managers, and that the computer manager has the same options as you. But I’ve increasingly felt that the opposition manager is colluding with the part of the game dealing with the matches themselves, and that they’re working against you – the overdrive kicks in and it’s game over.

This is why it’s not realistic – for a game that includes so many player attributes and statistics, it’s always happy to completely override them and make brilliant players rubbish and vice versa just so that it can have the “right” outcome. Obviously as it’s only a computer game determined by numbers there are only going to be a limited number of outcomes, but it seems to be done in such a crude way that the destined result becomes clear very early on in matches. A lot of the frustration comes from the fact that you know you’re not going to win this match within the first couple of highlights in the first half, because you can clearly see that your players are slow and ponderous while the other players are running rings around you and passing it around like Barcelona, and any changes you make can’t and won’t alter that.

Given that this is ultimately a video game, how is this fair? There should always be a way out of it in the match – in real life, the way to shake players up is the half time team talk, but even if you shout aggressively at your players to get the hell on with it and they respond positively with “seemed to gain focus” or “seemed motivated”, they go back out there and play in exactly the same manner. Even if you change the mentality to Attacking, it takes until the other manager switches to Defensive before it has any impact. What’s the point of these features if they make no difference to how your team is playing until the computer decides that they can make a difference?

As I said, I know players have bad days, but in actual football matches, nine times out of ten the form book is followed. Football isn’t that unpredictable – the best teams nearly always win league matches and thus the leagues themselves. Momentum is built over a long period of time. The manager of a good team usually has a fairly easy life. FM mostly pre-ordaining results effectively reduces the user’s responsibility (and thus the whole game, in effect) to building squads, and yet even that is cast aside as soon as you get a few wins – you’ll be knocked back soon enough, after which the attibutes of your players will be deemed irrelevant, and you have to start the process over again.

How often does this actually happen in a real season? The teams at the top of leagues usually have a couple of wobbles in their season, a dip in form lasting three or four matches – rebuilding form is not a constant cyclical process of “four wins then three defeats then four wins”; most of the time, a team’s form is stable through the season, be it consistently good or consistently bad. And yet when playing FM13 it feels like you’re in a constant battle with some unknown force to try and prevent the team spiralling out of control, and that that force will eventually overpower you and you’ll end up mid-table or worse, whatever the ability level of your squad.

Maybe I’m putting too much emphasis on individual matches – but then I thought that was the whole point of actual real life football. Managers aren’t allowed long-term building these days – they are judged on short-term results which puts a greater emphasis on tactics, team talks and substitutions. And don’t believe for one minute that they don’t have an effect on these things. If FM13 has decided those are irrelevant and it’s going to override anything you do, how can you do your job?

Not only is that not football but that’s not video gaming either – it’s watching a computer do a thing. If you had a deus ex machina like that in other video games there would be uproar. Imagine if you were playing a first-person shooter and the game decided you were doing too well, and so decided to bring out some bad guy with a rapid-fire rocket launcher that doesn’t actually exist to kill you. That’s essentially what it feels like FM13 is doing every time you get into a good run of form – it wants to stop you and will resort to any means necessary.

I honestly don’t understand what I’m supposed to do – I’d take a defeat if I knew I could bounce back straight away, but I’ve done this enough times to know that you won’t. A defeat in FM will lead to more defeats, regardless of what you actually do. The game just feels so out of control that I don’t know why I’m wasting time, effort, energy and emotion on it.

So I’m taking a break. I don’t know how long for – it might be a week, a month or a year, but I can’t deal with it any more. I don’t want to play a football game that desperately wants me to fail to the point where matches are virtually rigged against me and I can’t do anything about it. I’m being punished for having a good team, and that’s not how football works.

A Football Manager 2012 Story – Blow-by-Blow

Though this may sound incredibly sad to some of you, I have been having great fun on my current FM12 save.

I’ve never been overly keen on starting the game with big teams, but the way this panned out was rather odd. I started a game as Barcelona manager, but with the aim of dismantling the Best Team in the World(TM) and replacing the players with loads of mediocre British players – the first players I secured the signings of were Bobby Zamora (well it sounds Spanish) and James Morrison. Only, when I transfer-listed all the key players – you know, Messi, Villa, Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol and the like – they didn’t particularly like it, and being a big softie, I was won over by a bunch of fictional CGI footballers.

So my response was to start this: another game, where I would manager Barcelona seriously, and try and improve on their disappointing season – tonight, of course, is the Copa del Rey final, where Barca will face Athletic Bilbao for their first trophy since the Club World Championship was secured last year. I started it under the name of Gary Speed, as I don’t like starting a new game under my own name alongside having a World Class reputation. I started it in January so it’s with the basic patches. Also I’ll add a disclaimer that I didn’t necessarily not cheat (I did but only a couple of times, where I felt there had been considerable injustice).

Timeline

05/07 – Gary Speed is a shock appointment as the replacement for Josep Guardiola as Barcelona manager. The Wales national team manager steps back into club management to replace the Spaniard, who had announced his intention to leave after the Champions League Final victory over Manchester United a month previously. Speed will now have the opportunity to further strengthen a squad recently boosted by the signings of Cesc Fabregas and Alexis Sanchez, which were overseen by Guardiola in the interim period.

24/07 – AC Milan centre-back Thiago Silva signs for Barcelona for £38.5 million. The signing of the Brazilian international, rated as one of the best defenders in the world, is a statement of intent from new boss Gary Speed, although he says the signing was organised by club president Sandro Rosell.

27/07 – Young winger Cristian Tello signs for Osasuna for £1.3 million.

14/08 – Barcelona lose Gary Speed’s first competitive game in charge 2-0 to Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu in the first leg of the Supercopa de Espana, with goals from Kaka and Fabio Coentrao. Dani Alves is sent off. It is a disappointing start for Barca, who had previously gone unbeaten in their pre-season campaign.

17/08 – In the second leg of the Supercopa at the Camp Nou, Real Madrid edge to a 1-0 win courtesy of a goal from Cristiano Ronaldo, completing a 3-0 aggregate win and piling early pressure on Gary Speed.

24/08 – Just days before the start of the new season, Jonathan Soriano is sold by Barcelona to Villarreal for £1 million. Speed confirms his intention to sign another striker before the end of the transfer window.

26/08 – Barcelona snatch the UEFA Super Cup in Monaco with a 1-0 win over Porto. A dramatic stoppage time winner from young midfielder Thiago Alcantara seals the club’s first trophy success under Speed.

28/08 – Just two days after their Monaco triumph, Barcelona play their first league game under Speed, edging past Villarreal in a nervy display. The only goal comes from David Villa.

31/08 – On transfer deadline day, Barcelona surprisingly sign Federico Macheda on loan for the rest of the season from Manchester United. Speed suggests the young Italian offers something different to the other strikers the club currently has.

11/09 – League action resumes after an international break with Barcelona visiting San Sebastian, where they cruise to a 4-1 win over Real Sociedad. Villa grabs two, Messi gets his first goal of the seeason, and Gerard Pique also scores.

14/09 – In Gary Speed’s first Champions League match in charge, Barcelona beat Partizan 2-0 in Belgrade with a goal from Messi and an own goal from Moreira. Barca will also face Shakhtar and Udinese in their group.

17/09 – Osasuna are the next visitors to Camp Nou and are dispatched 4-0, courtesy of David Villa and a Pedro hat-trick.

20/09 – Barcelona’s biggest league game of the season so far sees them travel to the Mestalla to face Valencia, struggling early on under Unai Emery. In an incredible display, Barca thrash them 7-0: Messi, Sanchez and Villa score 2 each, with the Chilean getting his first goals for his new club, and Iniesta also gets him name on the scoresheet. Valencia end the game with 10 men, compounding a miserable day for them. The results boosts Barca’s goal difference as they chase fellow fast-starters Real Madrid, currently banging in goals for fun.

24/09 – Another remarkable performance from Barca as they beat Atletico Madrid 6-0 at the Camp Nou. Villa gets another 2, taking his total to 8 from 5 league games. Pique also gets a rare double, and there are also goals from Xavi and Pedro.

27/09 – Udinese put up more of a fight than the previous two teams but are unable to stop Barca, who win 2-0, with Sanchez scoring against his former club and Messi getting another Champions League goal.

01/10 – A crucial day in La Liga. Barca travel to El Molinon where they edge past a resilient Sporting Gijon 3-1, with goals from Messi, Thiago Alcantara and Iniesta, while back in Barcelona, Espanyol beat Real Madrid 2-1, which puts Barca clear at the top for the first time this season.

15/10 – After another international break, Barca emerge rampant once again, beating Racing Santander 4-0 at the Camp Nou. Federico Macheda scores his first goal for the club, and he is joined on the scoresheet by Pedro, Villa and young defender Marc Bartra.

18/10 – In another Champions League tie, Barca pick up their third win of the campaign with a 3-0 win over Shakhtar. An own goal from Pyatov sets them on their way, followed by goals from Iniesta and Messi

23/10 – Another mighty display from Barca as they destroy Sevilla. The scoreline finishes at 8-1: Villa and Messi get hat-tricks, along with a Spahic own goal and Macheda.

26/10 – In the first round of the Copa del Rey, Barca draw Segunda B side Deportivo Alaves, the former UEFA Cup runners-up. But there is to be no romantic success for the underdog in the Basque Country, despite providing a stiff fight. Barca win 3-1, with goals from Pedro and 2 from Macheda. This despite Puyol’s sending off for a professional foul.

30/10 – Michael Laudrup’s Mallorca are Barca’s next opponents at the Camp Nou and are once again ruthlessly disposed of. It finishes 4-1: Villa picks up another hat-trick and Xavi also scores.

02/11 – A minor slip from Barca in Donetsk as Willian equalises in stoppage time to give Shakhtar a 2-2 draw after an enthralling contest. But the draw is enough to confirm Barca’s place in the Second Round once again. Pedro and Messi are the Barca scorers.

06/11 – A day after a shock defeat for Real Madrid to in-form Osasuna at the Bernabeu, Barca travel to Bilbao to face Athletic. Messi, Bartra, an own goal from Mikel San Jose and Macheda are on the scoresheet to give them another 4-1 win.

09/11 – Alaves travel to the Camp Nou in the hope of an unlikely upset, but their hopes are quickly extinguished. Barca win 6-1, with Afellay and Villa getting 2 each and further goals from Pedro and an own goal from David Rangel. Meanwhile, there is managerial bloodshed in La Liga as three managers are sacked within 5 days: Manuel Pellegrini of Malaga, Marcelino of Sevilla and Javier Aguirre of Real Zaragoza. Before the next round of matches, Quique Flores is appointed as manager of Malaga, while Sevilla appoint Rafa Benitez.

19/11 – Zaragoza now travel to Catalonia for their first game under new manager Victor Hernandez, beginning a crucial series of games for Barca against sides at the bottom of the league. The strugglers slump to another defeat. But aside from the fact that the scoreline is only 3-1, there is bad news for Barca, as Iniesta, scorer of the second goal (Villa and Messi also score), his injured late on. It transpires that he has a broken leg and will be out for up to 6 months, a severe blow: his 10 assists had been crucial to Barca’s run of success. However, there is brighter news as Real Madrid are held by Valencia at the Mestalla, securing Emery’s job for now. The gap between the top 2 teams continues to grow.

22/11 – Another victory for Barca in the Champions League, but it is again a struggle. Keita, with his first of the season, and Messi fire the home side to a 2-1 win over Partizan, but the Serbian side’s goal makes it 8 matches without a clean sheet for the dominant Los Cules.

26/11 – Barca finally get that clean sheet in their next match in Madrid against struggling Getafe, although the win is an uncomfortable 2-0, with goals from Pedro and Thiago Silva, the Brazilian scoring his first goal for the club.

30/11 – Another struggling side in the form of Granada is next, as Barca head to Andalusia. Cesc Fabregas finally gets his first goal of the season, while David Villa scores yet again. Just 2-0 again, though. Meanwhile, there is good news from the Bernabeu as Real Madrid lose again at home, this time 3-2 to Villarreal.

03/12 – The final match in the run of strugglers for Barca is Levante at the Camp Nou, and once again it is a stuttering Barca who cannot find their magic touch of earlier in the year. Federico Macheda scores the deciding goal. Levante end the game with 10 men. A day later, Luis Garcia is sacked by Getafe.

06/12 – The final Champions League group game is in Udine, with Barca back to their best with a 5-0 win. Sanchez again scores against his former club, along with 2 each from Villa and Messi. The Italians head for the Europa League as Shakhtar progress to the Second Round. Meanwhile, Valencia sack Unai Emery after their disastrous Champions League campaign comes to an end with just 3 points.

10/12 – El Clasico: La Liga ends for Barces for the winter break with the toughest opponent of them all, only one now lagging behind due to those slip-ups. It is a tense, nervy game for the majority, until Carles Puyol, of all people, heads Barca in front late on. A second from Villa settles it. Barca have their first Clasico win under Speed. Real slip to 3rd in the table, overtaken by Real Sociedad, currently on an incredible run of form that goes back to the aftermath of their 4-1 defeat to Barca in the second round of matches.

The interim period sees two managerial appointments – Manuel Pellegrini returns to La Liga with Getafe, while Martin O’Neill is appointed as Valencia’s new manager.

14/12 – Barca now head for Japan for the Club World Championship, facing Al-Gharafa in the semi-final. Amazingly they are unable to break down the resilient Qataris, and it takes until extra time for them to seize the win and a place in the final. The entrances of Messi, who scores 2, and Pedro, who also grabs one, prove crucial.

17/12 – The final in Yokohama is not against Santos as had been expected. The Brazilians were knocked out by Mexico’s CF Monterrey, who like Al-Gharafa put up a stern defence in the face of a strong Barca side. Again it goes to extra time, with Sanchez and Messi grabbing the goals that clinches Barca’s second Club World Championship success and Speed’s second trophy win.

21/12 – After returning to Spain, Barca’s final game before the winter break is the first leg of their Fifth Round Copa del Rey tie against Segunda B’s Ponferradina, the smallest club left in the competition getting a dream draw. Seydou Keita, an own goal from Quintana and Macheda seal a 3-0 win for the giants.

02/01 – Carlos Tevez completes his move from Manchester City to Barcelona for £25.5 million. The striker had been marginalised in England, and brings a new striking option to Barca for Gary Speed, who had negotiated the deal some time earlier.

04/01 – Tevez makes his Barca debut at home to Ponferradina, and, predictably, gets on the scoresheet with the fifth and final goal. A 5-0 win, with 2 each from Sanchez and Afellay, secures an 8-0 aggregate win. O’Neill’s Valencia await in the Quarter-Finals.

07/01 – El Derbi Barceloni against Espanyol at Cornella-El Prat, and another pleasing result for the Barca fans, now in awe of Speed’s success. Villa, Messi and Silva are the scorers as the visitors win 3-0.

11/01 – Not even Martin O’Neill can find a way of stopping Barca. After the thumping earlier in the season, though, 5-0 is progress from 6-0. Villa gets 2, while Afellay continues his great run of scoring in the cup. Puyol and Pedro also score. Barca can touch the Semi-Finals. In the other big quarter-final, 2nd meets 3rd at the Bernabeu, and amazingly it ends in a 6-6 draw, giving hope to Real Sociedad.

14/01 – Barca have now clearly rediscovered their magic touch of earlier in the season. Real Betis are the next visitors, currently in the middle of a club record run of games without victory. They are smashed 6-0. Tevez and Messi score 2 each, Bartra is the only Spanish scorer and Sanchez also adds his name to the list. The club also parade new signing Arne Friedrich at half-time, the German international having signed on a free transfer.

18/01 – After that run of 8 matches without a clean sheet, Barca had now gone 12 without conceding a goal, but this run comes to an end at the Mestalla. But conceding goals is no worry for this Barca side: despite conceding 2 for the first time since the draw in Donetsk, they score 4, courtesy of Sanchez, Thiago Alcantara, Xavi and Villa, securing a 9-2 aggregate win. That makes it 15 goals scored in the 3 matches against Valencia this season, with another to come. Elsewhere, Real Sociedad hold Real Madrid to a 2-2 draw at home, knocking out last year’s cup winners on away goals. They will face the only Segunda side left, Numancia. Barca face Villarreal.

21/01 – A difficult trip to La Rosaleda follows. Big spenders Malaga haven’t been doing as well as planned but provide a tough test for Barca. Going into stoppage time, it is still 0-0, but in an almost-identical replay of the UEFA Super Cup Final, a cross from the left finds Thiago Alcantara, to secure Barca’s 18th win in a row in both the league and all competitions.

25/01 – The first of 3 matches in a row against Villarreal takes place at El Madrigal, the first leg of the Copa del Rey Semi-Final. Despite the sending-off of Sanchez, Barca cruise to a 3-0 win with goals from Macheda, Villa and a first goal of the season for Dani Alves, putting them on course for the final. In the league, Real Madrid slip up again with a 2-2 draw against Athletic in Bilbao, but Real Sociedad slip up at home to Sporting and draw 1-1.

28/01 – In the league encounter, Barca put out a full strength side, and win at a canter again, securing a 19th win from 19 as they hit half-distance. A Carlos Marchena own goal sets them rolling, followed by a first Barcelona goal for the outstanding Abidal. Messi scores the third, while Sanchez gets revenge for his red card with the fourth. 4-0.

01/02 – At the Camp Nou, Villarreal put up more of a fight than in the previous two matches, but still can’t prevent the inevitable. Goals from Pedro and Macheda give Barca a 2-1 win, 5-1 on aggregate, and put them one match away from another trophy. Their opponents in the final are Real Sociedad, who also happen to be their opponents in their next league game. The Basque team are now 12 points behind Barca, having played a game more.

Table

Other information – Champions League Second Round draw
Chelsea vs Bayern Munich
Villarreal vs Internazionale
Bayer Leverkusen vs Manchester United
AC Milan vs Borussia Dortmund
Benfica vs Real Madrid
FC Basel vs Manchester City
Porto vs Barcelona
Shakhtar Donetsk vs Arsenal

Barcelona top scorers (all competitive matches)
David Villa – 27
Lionel Messi – 23
Pedro – 12
Alexis Sanchez – 10
Federico Macheda – 9
Ibrahim Afellay – 5
Thiago Alcantara – 4
Andres Iniesta – 4

La Liga top scorers
Cristiano Ronaldo – 24
David Villa – 19
Gonzalo Higuain – 18
Falcao – 16
Xabi Prieto – 15
Lionel Messi – 13
Fernando Llorente – 10
Carlos Vela – 10
Gaizka Toquero – 10