2007 was not a great year for Barça and we are all feeling pretty lousy since losing to Real Mierda last week. Nevertheless, life goes on and as we are reaching the end of the year I thought it would be appropriate to have an awards thing in order to look back at the best, and in some cases worst, of the year. 

Best Player Of 2007: There were only two candidates for this award, Andres Iniesta and Leo Messi. Iniesta has been fantastic all year, playing in various different positions and performing consistently well in all of them. He seems to get better every year and hopefully he will be around for a long long time. However, the genius that is Leo Messi has to win this award. There have been a number of great players at Barça in recent years and Messi ...

With the Christmas break upon us, the press and fans have plenty of time to mull over what went wrong in yesterday's Clasico. Unfortunately, when it comes to analyzing a Barça defeat the press and fans alike are prone to making knee-jerk conclusions. Calls for the heads of Ronaldinho and Frank Rijkaard are par for the course this season, but would sacking Rijkaard and selling Ronaldinho lead to a better future?

Of course we will never know unless it happens and quite honestly I can't see Laporta panicking just yet. Of course it is terribly frustrating to be outplayed by Madrid at Camp Nou but it is important to keep our heads, and with a little reflexion I think we will see that things are not as bad as some would have us believe.

It is easy to say now that Rijkaard made mistakes; for...

With just two weeks to go before the biggest game of the season the powers that be have still not announced a kick-off time for El Clasico. There have been a number of rumours that the game will be played on Friday 21st December but I think this is impossible now. Apart from the inconvenience to fans I understand Madrid have a game in the Copa del Rey with Alicante on December 19th. Even if that was moved to the 18th Madrid are hardly likely to accept playing Barça three days later.

Usually the date and kick-off time of a Barça-Madrid game is decided weeks before in order to allow the TV companies plenty of time to advertise the game, but this year's TV wars seem to be affecting the announcement of dates even more than usual. It is a disgrace that fans who need to make travel arrangements are k...

The endless stories and speculation about Ronaldinho in the last few weeks got me thinking of how the press treated Louis Van Gaal in his first term at Barça, and basically how the press is capable of turning the public against someone.

When Barça signed Van Gaal in the summer of 1997 he was most people's choice to take Barça back to the top. He had won the European Cup in 1995 with an exciting young team at Ajax, beating the Milan team that had humilliated Barça the year before, and fresh in the memory was a footballing lesson that Ajax had given Real Madrid in the Bernabeu in the 95/96 season.

In his first season at Barça he won the league and cup double, and followed that up with another league title the next season. Barça played attacking football and Van Gaal got the ...

As we all know the press struggle to find credible stories during the international break, do you remember the nonsense about the Barça-Madrid game being brought forward to a Friday - /blogs/FCBnews/posts/barca-madrid-on-friday-21st-december/. This week we are back to the old favourite of the offers that are being prepared for Barça's biggest stars.

The Barcelona sports press have to fill a number of pages every day so perhaps it is understandable that they report such rumours. El Sport and El Mundo Deportivo have both run two stories this weekend taken from the English press. The first suggests that Manchester City could be about to make a huge offer for Leo Messi or Ronaldinho. It's the type of headline that makes you ...

There are many opinions as to why Barça find it so difficult to win away games. Is it the system? Is it the player's attitude? Are the players not good enough? I decided to look at the league games from last season and this season so far, and I discovered a remarkable statistic.

Of twenty-five away league games since the beginning of last season Barça have won nine, drawn eight and lost eight. What is remarkable is the difference when Samuel Eto'o was in the starting line-up. Due to injuries Eto'o has been limited to starting only seven of these games, but of those games Barça have won six (Celta 2-3, Racing 0-3, Recreativo 0-4, Real Sociedad 0-2, Atletico 0-6 and Nastic 1-5) and only lost one (Villarreal 2-0). Without Eto'o the figures look horrible: won 3, drawn 8, lost 7. Eto'o scored five goal...

Now that most Rangers fans have left Barcelona I suppose I should share my thoughts. First I'd like to say that the Rangers fans who have posted comments on this site have nearly all been polite and I'd like to thank them for taking part in the debates and not getting involved in any slanging matches with their critics.

Unfortunately the fans who came to Barcelona seem to have left a bad impression on the locals. OK they didn't smash up the stadium or cause a major riot, and the vast majority came with the intention of having fun and nothing else. Rangers fans are not the first British supporters to come here and drink copious amounts of alcohol, sing in the middle of the night when neighbours are trying to sleep, and urinate in the street.

So, what was the difference? Having spoken ...

Next Wednesday Barça face an important Champions League game with Rangers, but due to the demands of TV companies and lack of support from the Spanish Football Federation their preparation will be less than ideal.

First they were asked to play at Valladolid at 10pm on a Thursday evening, this being a few days after the clocks went back meant that it would seem like kicking off at 11pm and finishing the game just before 1am. This is no excuse for not winning as it was the same for the Valladolid players, but it is not an ideal situation with two games in the following six days.

Having played on Thursday Barça are forced to play their weekend fixture with Betis on Sunday. Spain's other Champions League teams, Real Madrid, Sevilla and Valencia all get to play on Saturday. Opponent...

With the winter transfer window approaching, the stories of offers for Ronaldinho are appearing regularly in the press. Ronnie's chief suitors are once again AC Milan and Chelsea, and the bids are supposed to be in the region of €60million. The irregular form of the Brazilian has sparked a debate within the club as to whether it might now be the time to thank Ronnie for his time at the club and take the money.

Ronaldinho received a lot of criticism last season for not playing to his usual high standards and Ronnie blamed a lack of rest after the World Cup, combined with pre-season tours and the mid-season trip to Japan for the World Club Championship. However, this summer he did get a proper rest after declining to play for Brazil in the Copa America, yet so far this season there has been l...

One of the things I always enjoy about Barça playing British teams is the opportunity to compare the British and the Spanish press. It is interesting to see how the papers tend to write what they believe their readers want to read, rather than reporting impartially what they have seen.

A lot of the British press saw yesterday's match as a heroic performance from Rangers, and I feel I have to say I don't agree. Granted that Barça have the Messis and Ronaldinhos and on paper should win every game 5-0, but we all know that in football anything can happen. If Rangers are capable of winning 0-3 in Lyon and beating Celtic 3-0, surely they could have given Barça a run for their money in front of their own fans. Scottish football can't be so bad if their national team can beat France home and away, ...