La Liga 19/20 - The new Era

Starts tomorrow or today depending on your time zone

First game is Bilbao vs Barca at San Mames. Big news is Messi will miss the game.

Still expect a Barca win

La Liga are struggling to sell its TV rights in the UK. Currently, they've sold a whopping three games to ITV, and are negotiating to sell more, but every other company low-balled them.

Meanwhile, Monchi is well and truly back at Sevilla, and has executed his trademark "throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks" transfer strategy. 11 new players signed ffs. The club has six centre backs and three left backs on the books. Sarabia and Ben Yedder, basically their whole attack last season, have been sold to PSG and Monaco respectively.

Lopetegui has a lot of options, though I'm not convinced they're all good:

Keepers: Tomas Vaclik, Sergio Rico

Defenders: Jules Kounde, Diego Carlos, Sergi Gomez, Simon Kjaer, Daniel Carrico, Joris Gnagnon, Jesus Navas, Sebastien Corchia, Sergio Reguilon, Sergio Escudero, Guilherme Arana

Midfilders: Fernando Reges, Nemanja Gudelj, Joan Jordan, Ever Banega, Franco Vazquez, Oliver Torres, Alejandro Pozo, Bryan Gil, Rony Lopes, Lucas Ocampos

Forwards: Manus Dabbur, Luuk De Jong, Munir El Haddadi, Nolito

Valencia have signed a good striker in Maxi Gomez, but could be losing Rodrigo to Atletico and haven't signed anyone else of note. Betis could push for 4th this season with Fekir and Borja Iglesias arriving.

Hazard injured for a month?

Some are saying Atletico are gonna be better than Real this season, but the bookies still have Real quite a way above, interesting.

If Atletico get Rodrigo also, definitely they will be loaded up front. But they did the same with Gameiro who was just so-so and moved on to Valencia. If they can be their usual hard to beat self and also improve in attack, they really could rejuvenate and be a team to be feared again.

Valverde has seen the light!!! Rakitic and Busquets both benched

Worst Barca midfield I've ever seen

No La liga coverage in India. Forced to watch it on Facebook

Athletic looking good and in control so far

Which means Barca would be sucker punching them before HT according to La Liga rules.

Athletic could have already scored, totally in control of the game. Still, they screwed up once and handed Suarez a chance where he hit the post. Then Suarez went out injured.

Barca look clueless. Maybe they need halftime to regroup.

Away at San Mames is always tough. It was brave to go out with a completely different midfield setup. They need time.

Wouldn’t have been any different with Rakitic or Buswuets, I’ve seen enough to know that for years not just 1 game.

@Lucifer wrote:No La liga coverage in India. Forced to watch it on Facebook

It seems similar to the UK, no one is willing to pay high for their matches. I think the CL and PL already seem costly enough for the broadcasters.

Rakitic came on at halftime and Barca are back to life

Will score at any moment now

We need to sign Neymar back if we truly want to be independent from Messi

@rincon wrote:Rakitic came on at halftime and Barca are back to life

Will score at any moment now

Because for whatever reason, a huge chunk of Barca fans forgot what an actual good CM midfielder looks like...which Rakitic is.

Rakitic is better than all the lads who started in midfield, all of them put together are maybe as good as his right foot

De Jong is basically a poor mans Kroos bought for 80M. All he does is recycle posession. He'll lose his place within a month imo

@halamadrid2 wrote:De Jong is basically a poor mans Kroos bought for 80M. All he does is recycle posession. He'll lose his place within a month imo

no chance because he cost 80 mil and when he starts next to Busquets, Busi will make him look like hot shit

No messi no party

Elated.

Good baby Jesus what a fcking goal

Luckdane is back baybay

Calma De Jong is great. He was just playing with donkeys in the first half.

Barca looked like shit today

As someone who can't stand anything good happening to Arduriz I'm having very conflicted feelings right now