The Comité de Apelación (Appeal committee) have accepted Barça's appeal against the yellow card received by Dani Alves in last Sunday's game at Racing. the card was Alves's fifth of the season and would have meant a suspension in the next league game at home to Sporting Gijon on Sunday. Pep Guardiola will now have Alves available which will be important given that Gerard Piqué and Rafa Marquez will both miss the game through suspension and Carles Puyol is doubtful through injury.

It's been another superb month for Barça: four wins out of four in La Liga plus we are through to the Copa del Rey semi-finals after knocking out Atletico Madrid and Espanyol. The level of some players continues to be very high which makes choosing a player of the month very difficult. However, the player of the month for January 2009 has to go to Dani Alves whose progression in recent weeks has been exceptional. We all knew that Alves had great talent and never-ending resources of energy, but his adaptation to his new team has impressed us all and the combination with Leo Messi on the right wing has surpassed all expectations. In January alone Alves has notched up five assists...

December has been another great month for Barça with wins over Valencia, Madrid and Villarreal, only the defeat at home to Shakhtar spoilt it but then again that game didn't really count for anything. Having now checked the points totted up by each player you can imagine my surprise to find that the December player of the month is none other than Thierry Henry. Regular readers will know I have not been Henry's biggest fan since his arrival at Camp Nou but his improvement this season has been notable, he started this month with a hat-trick against Valencia and yesterday he grabbed the vital winner at Villarreal and was for many people the man of the match. In an interview last week...

Last week I wrote a piece in praise of Leo Messi, Samuel Eto'o and Thierry Henry. However, it could be argued that the form of Barça's defence is just as important if not more so to this season's success. Victor Valdés has only been beaten nine times in fifteen league games which makes Barça's the best defence in La Liga so far this season.

At the start of the season there were still a few problems at the back especially when it came to defending at set pieces.  The first clean sheet in the league wasn't achieved until the 0-1 win at Athletic Bilbao in the seventh jornada. Since then we have managed another six clean sheets in La Liga and have now only...