Forgive me for the lack of posts this week, I'm still on holiday but I've found a gap in my busy schedule to bring you this year's end of the year awards. You may not agree with my choices so please send your comments and tell everyone what you would have decided, or maybe you have some new categories you would like to see introduced.

Best Player of 2008: Leo Messi - Shouldn't be too much discussion on this one, it's true that players such as Xavi, Toure, Iniesta, Eto'o and Puyol deserve credit for their performances over the past 12 months but Messi is really in a class of his own. His goalscoring and assists totals have been increasing and no matter how well the team are playing generally we still notice the difference when Messi is not in the starting line up. Cristiano Ronaldo...

Just to let you all know I'm off to London for a few days to spend christmas with the family so the blog may be a bit slow these days. I'll try to keep in touch with the news and post if there is any big news, and I'll be back before the first game of 2009 against Mallorca on January 3. Please feel free to post comments here on anything you like. I hope you all have a great christmas and that all your dreams come true in 2009.

Having sorted out the polls I have now managed to get the statistics page up and running. You can click on statistics at the top of the page and then you can check the stats for both this season and last season, or if you want to go immediately to this season's stats click here

While we are on the subject of improvements to the blog please feel free to send comments with your suggestions. Please don't expect me to follow all your ideas but I promise to consider all of them and if I have technical difficulties getting things done I will ask the guys at Oleole if they can help sort things out.