But we can tie the best team in the world. At their home..

Don’t ever change La Liga. Or better yet, Villarreal.

We’ve dropped all the way down to 6th place. Taking on Real Madrid up next.

I’m not gonna lie. The end of the season doesn’t look to bright for us. I just want Barca to win this title. I would hate another R.Madrid winning season.

I want Villarreal to qualify for at least the Champions League now, but maybe that is even asking too much..Europa maybe?

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Not that it never wasn’t before. It just seemed like Atletico and us were taking a little vacation before hand. Sevilla had just gone through “hell weeks” which composed of Valencia, Real Madrid, And Barcelona. Not usually a good time for any team that plays all three in a row. This does give us a slight advantage to push on some point and put some pressure on 3rd and 4th place teams. We’ve done that successfully. Gaining 7/9 points isn’t that bad, especially with all the bad luck that we’ve been having.
Senna should be back in ~2 weeks from Saturday. It looks like a case of the hamstrings have been going around lately and Senna is its latest victim. Oddly enough we seem to be pulling another Liverpool. Winning matches without our Captain/Midfielder.

I’m not going to spend much time on this game, mainly because it was such an odd way of scoring both our goals. Hell even the Recreativo goal was odd. It seemed like a bunch of chickens running around with their heads cut off. Nice job defense, but to be fair Javier Camuñas made a pretty sick flick.

Man look at that flick by Cani. I swear he is slowly becoming my new favorite Villarreal player. Such a skill and pace. That flick was all class and at that crazy angle too. Great game by Villarreal.

Getafe.

What lousy keeping. I’m surprised we couldn’t sink the ball in the back of the net right away. Llorente’s goal was perfect. What a through ball to the back of the net. This is beautiful football. I love it.

So where does that lead us?

Sat. 2 16:00 ET Villarreal v Sevilla FC El Madrigal Spanish Primera División
Sun. 10 11:00 ET Barcelona v Villarreal Estadio Camp Nou Spanish Primera División
Sun. 17 11:00 ET Villarreal v Real Madrid Estadio El Madrigal Spanish Primera División
Sun. 24 11:00 ET Villarreal v Valencia Estadio El Madrigal Spanish Primera División
Sun. 31 11:00 ET Mallorca v Villarreal Estadio Son Moix Spanish Primera División

This is going to be one hell of a month…
Vamos Villarreal!!!

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We will be back next year. I’m not giving up on these guys.
Vamos Villarreal!

I can say this much. If we play like how we’ve been playing in La Liga we are absolutely fucked. Losing the last game at home was inexcusable.

Villarreal Málaga
Shots (on Goal) 20(6) 8(2)

I always thought stats don’t say everything about the game, and that shows as proof right here. You figure with 6 shots on goal with a caliber like Villarreal we’d score. Nope. We got robbed with awful set plays and too many close calls. That doesn’t win a match and the Villarreral squad has to recognize that. Hell not even the team, Pellegrini has to realize that. I think all of us were a bit cocky (or maybe it was just me and Pellegrini) going into the 2nd half of La Liga and the Champions League. Well, now its coming back to bite us.

Valencia won their game last weekend and are above us in the Champions League qualifiers. Perfect. If that isn’t motivation then I don’t know what is. We have to show EVERYONE that we belong at the Champions League. If we keep on playing the way we are then we’re going to be nothing but flukes. I for one will not stand for that shit. Seeing this club play on their prime is amazing and some beautiful football is made.
Granted our luck always ends up sucking. With injuries and inconsistency we end up looking like a mid table team like Espanyol. Er, last year Espanyol.

Injuries and all of that lovely stuff
Senna, Cazorla are both out for tomorrow. Cani and Fernandez are back though, and hopefully will bring a positive vibe to the team on the pitch.
As for Arsenal. Almunia, Djourou and Gallas are all out for injury. Not good for either of the sides.

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Main difference though. Wenger has been pressing the boys about winning and how important this is for them. Now I don’t know if this means that Wenger has been taking it easy on us, but we can’t afford to play mind games here. Nice and simple, press, defend, score, defend.

Today’s match would of been completely different for Pool and Chelsea if defense was up. 4-4? Yeah, it was an amazing game (I screamed acouple of times for the goals), but that just shows weakness in the line of defense for the squad. Liverpool’s keeper og was just sad as much as I love the Spainard.

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Emirates Stadium. Are we ready? I sure as hell hope so. I’m praying for you guys.

Vamos Villarreal!

(PS: Believe me. I’m just as disappointed with Villarreal. However, we can’t give up. Theres a reason we’re in the Champions League..)

La Liga

We’ll be taking on 15th place holders Almeria on Saturday. We beat them at home 2-1 last year and did it in a un-smooth Villarreal way. Of course we’re at our prime in the league right now. At least I think so. The fitness and state the club is currently in brings nothing but confidence my way. I say a 1-2 game again with us being the victors.
Sevilla is playing 17th place Recreativo Huelva. Lets hope someone slips up and causes them to lose 1-0. Probably won’t happen but one can hope. With Atleticos last lost we are a good 5 points ahead of them securing a Champions League qualifier spot. If Sevilla loses this match we’ll only be a game behind. So 3rd place is by all means not out of the question.

Champions League

Well after some looking around, I guess it wasn’t an April fools joke. Cesc is back on the squad and is ready to play again. Great. Arsenal has been playing ok since his injury, but this only gives Arsene more firepower on his side. With him and the new Russian player they have all the firepower they need. Of course we can’t forget about Van Persie, Vela and Nasri. After looking at all of these factor it really makes me scratch my head in how Arsenal isn’t in 2nd or 3rd place. Anyways, maybe all this Cesc to Barcelona talk will distract them. Also he hasn’t even played with the “new” Arsenal yet. We’ll see how he adapts this weekend when they play Manchester City.

Well I’m off to go pack and get mah flippy floppys in the bag. I would post “I’m On A Boat” video but I feel like I already am on the edge with my writing privileges when I posted that Rickroll.

Vamos Villarreal!

First off let me apologize for my whole “voyeur” comment. It strictly was meant for a bit of laughing from the reference from IOSS/Special1TV. So Anon I’m sorry if I offended your club, same goes to all you Gunners. More on drawing Arsenal for the Champions League in a bit. First some great news from La Liga as Villarreal takes the win 2-0 against Athletic Bilbao.

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Mati can fly!
The overall performance of this game was the model on how we have to play. If anyone saw this game I’m sure they’d agree. It wasn’t to the point where we were going all out to score a goal, or so lazy to where the opponent had chances like none other. Villarreal played in a smooth team like formation. Everyone had their roles and executed it perfectly. It was more slow forwarded, but we kept possession and the upper hand.

First Half

Nihat and Rossi make such a great pair. I love seeing them play together. They’re the Torres/Villa of Villarreal. A few minutes after kickoff Nihat had his first shot at goal. Sadly he didn’t have enough power or move on the ball to finish. Great attempt though. Throughout the rest of the first half resulted in one of the sides end field. We defended any chances Bilbao had against us and did our job fine. Couldn’t finish, but I’m sure they were happy not conceding any goals. Especially after facing Atletico and being scored on like nothing.

Second Half

Magic. I love me some football magic. First off the mess up that our Captain made when he was trying (???) to clear the ball out of our backside. Also, the Rossi run in the start of the second half resulted to a great pass to Cazorla. Very simply footie from there on out. A shot on the right side of the goal and it goes in. 1-0 Villarreal. It must of been a bad day for players, or a day of red cards. Susaeta gets sent off for a rough play and ends up putting Bilbao in defense mode. Fernandez’s run down the middle of the box was no match for the defense and the keeper. Great foot work and excellent goal. 2-0.

Highlights

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Final Stats:

Villarreal 2-0 Athletic Bilbao
Cazorla 68
Matias Fernandez 91

Shots (on Goal) 16(7) 15(5)
Fouls 21 21
Corner Kicks 6 5
Offsides 4 2
Time of Possession 62% 38%
Yellow Cards 4 1
Red Cards 0 1
Saves 5 5

Villarreal: Diego Lopez – Angel, Godin, Fuentes, Capdevila – Senna, Cani, Cazorla, Ibagaza (Fernandez 82) – Nihat (Llorente 65), Rossi (Bruno 88)

Athletic Bilbao: Iraizoz – Iraola, Ocio, Amorebieta, Koikili – Javi Martinez, Orbaiz (Ion Velez 86), Susaeta, Gabilondo – Toquero (Garmnendia 56), Llorente

Yellow Cards: Capdevila 6, Ibagaza 21, Susaeta 33, Eguren 60, Amorebieta 74, Senna 79

Red Cards: Susaeta 78

La Liga

So that leaves us at our Champions League qualifier spot in La Liga. Mmmm. Sevilla tore it up today and kept their fancy 6 point lead. Atletico still has yet to play, so the gap between us and them is still undetermined. Lets just hope they…tie. That’s good sportsmanship. Right? Yeah I think so. Somewhere in one of the Champions League discussion things on the side on ESPNsoccernet.com (You know, that really annoying automatic video that plays when you visit the site) started saying how Villarreal doesn’t care about La Liga anymore. That its all about Champions League football. I found that to be a bit…rubbish. We were and still are in a good position in the table. Sure Sevilla is up two games point wise but its not over. We still have a chance to secure a CL spot and that is quite important to us. 4th is not enough for how much we worked for this year. I would love to be all hopeful and say we COULD win the league, but that would require Barca and Madrid to have a losing streak……it can happen…damnit stop daydreaming. Anyways, yes, the Champions League is important to us, mainly because of how well were doing, but by all means does that mean that La Liga is 2nd class to us.

Champions Leauge

Champions League quarter final is coming up guys. Its a big one for a lot of us. If many of you didn’t know, we faced Arsenal in the 2006 Quarter Finals and lost due to penalties. Not my idea of going out in a bang. Its time to show them that were a better team from before (and less Forlanless). Pires is especially excited for this match up being a former Gunner. He says:

“Cleary it’s going to be a special game. It makes me very happy to return there and nowadays, as a Villarreal player, I want to win so I can continue in the competition with my team.”
“It’s going to be a very difficult game. I have no feelings of revenge for that semi-final, right now the only thing going through my head is to knock them out because I’m at Villarreal,”

Special game, I can agree to that. I’m excited for this clash . Goal scorer Cazorla also had some things to say about this matchup with Arsenal from a minor interview from the Villarreal website.

“We’ve shown our true level”
“We had to change, especially the bad image we had in the Vicente Calderón against Atlético. With this important victory, we have shown our true level and won three very important points to follow in the ranking”

Quite so. It should be epic and a great game to watch for all. We take the Gunners on the 7th of April. Bonus picture of Pires in a Arsenal shirt!

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Vamos Villarreal!!

]]> http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/villarreal-2-0-athletic-bilbao-and-more-champions-league-d.html/feed 2 http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/champions-league-draw-we-draw-thevoyeur.html http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/champions-league-draw-we-draw-thevoyeur.html#comments Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:35:10 +0000 Javier http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/champions-league-draw-we-draw-thevoyeur.html

I don’t know if I should be really happy or sad right now. This fixture can bring so many results to us. The positives will be us beating an EPL team (even if it is Arsenal), people seeing another La Liga team asides from Barca and R.Madrid, and then my own satisfaction in Jose Mourinho a favor. I can’t believe it to be honest. Being obessed with IOSS brought this draw more then just a shock to me. I guess I’m a little bit bias towards Wenger. I mean lets get my whole voyeur mindset out of the way and look at Wenger and his team.
Shit. Now I’m a little bit scared. Arsenal really is quite the team. They haven’t been the best in the EPL this year, almost losing their comfy 4th place spot to Aston Villa. However, their new captain Cesc has been injured for quite a while now. Rumors say that he’ll be back and running when we face them in our first match. This could cause a problem, seeing as they’ll have back their best player (IMO) on their squad again.
Overall I am really exctied to see these two teams clash. It really should be an even match with talent and should result in greatness. The other drawings are as fallows.

Who you all think is going to go through? For me it goes..
Villarreal, Porto (A man can hope), Barca and Liverpool. If thats true then only one EPL team will be in the final four, which would be wonderful. I’m tired of EPL teams taking up all the spot light.
Vamos Villarreal!

]]> http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/champions-league-draw-we-draw-thevoyeur.html/feed 2 http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/soclose-atletico-madrid-3-2-villarreal.html http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/soclose-atletico-madrid-3-2-villarreal.html#comments Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:04:48 +0000 Javier http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/soclose-atletico-madrid-3-2-villarreal.html

@*#()@&**($&@*($&*@&*$. So. Close. The screw up on Javi really screwed us over. Proof that the Rangers tactics suck. We used a 5-3-1 right after he got red carded from the game. Why, well we wanted to protect our score. Seems logical, right? Wrong. I’ll get more into detail later on in my post.

1st Half
Right at the start Mr. Kun gets thrown down and given the penalty. Of course its Forlan that takes the PK. Right here I’m already freaking out and praying to God that it doesn’t go in (that’s what she said). Diego Lopez being the badass he is, saves the PK and prevents the home team a goal. Nothing but smiles came after that. Our defense was working out great. Atletico did it get to the box a few times, but our defenders were playing top football. Capedevillas long pass to Javi Venta was absolute genius. Not only did Venta go pass the two last defenders but he slides the ball in the middle for Fernandez to score. 0-1 and were up. Some more challenges at goal were made by Atletico only to fail or not even get close to the net. Another through ball to the front almost made Fernandez score a second goal. He should of done better I think. With the half coming to the end, a angry Atletico starts to rise. One slide tackle Kun made was done with some amount of rage I think. I don’t think I’ve ever seen daddy this upset before. I don’t blame him though. Shooting at goal 15 times and not scoring would piss me off as well. With second half coming to a rise, were up 0-1. awesome.

2nd half aka The Fall

Nothing really can make me feel that bad the team right now. Sure we have injured players, but hey, were winning away! I should of knocked on wood when I said that..Cani gets a great goal soon after the whistle blows. Great touch by Rossi to Cani. I was actually amazed at it. It almost looked offside due to the angle that we were watching it from. The replay showed that it was easily on side and a great goal. Great little scoop done by Cani. Remember in football that when you make a goal, its really easy to concede right after? Fifteen seconds from the goal we made resulted with a goal for Atletico. Damn you Kun. I shouldn’t of made that daddy joke earlier. No worries, right? Lopez just did a little mistake and were still up..no need to panic..yet. Red card. Ok time to panic. Ventas horrible challenge on the outside of our box resulted in a fair red card. This is where we start playing like Rangers. Coach decides a change in the line and stadegy. Pires comes out for Franco. Thats a 4-4-2 to a 5-3-1. Lets make a huge line of defense and then there’s no way for them to get another goal! Right? Wrong. Atletico decides to made this interesting and brings in Pongolle for another attacker. So now its almost a 3-3-4 coming our way. All attack. This not only clashes with us terribly but Forlan gets a creeper goal right into the net. Great. 2-2. Just our fears. This whole Ranger tactic is failing us (go figure). Its not even about winning anymore, lets just get the tie. We make acouple of runs towards goal but fail horribly. We only have two lone submarines trying to make a goal. All attempts get swept and headed back to our direction. Now the final nail in the coffin. Lopez throws in a goal with the head and calls it game from there. God, damnit. So much for at least saving a point. We get two freekicks that we could make something from. Sennas goes over and results with nothing. The last one gets headed away from safety. Just our luck. I think we played a great game, its just a shame that Venta had to leave us. Could of ended completely different :-/.

Final Stats

32 shots at us and only 3 went in. Hey, that’s pretty impressive. That easily could of been a 5-2 game with some of the breaks that they made. Forlans in particular. The pathetic run he made on goal was quite hilarious. I shouldn’t say anything though, he did get a goal that resulted in our defeat.

La Liga

Sevilla luckily tied today. So they only gained one point ahead of us. Nothing to get too worried about. Atletico is creeping on our ass with only 2 points separating us. We should be fine against Athletic Bilbao next week. We’ll be at home and our players should be fit for this game. I expect a victory and easy three points from this match. FYI, make sure to post hatemail to Al. He watched this game with me today and he ended up celebrating like a little girl when the final score was shown. Pft.

Vamos Villarreal!!

]]> http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/soclose-atletico-madrid-3-2-villarreal.html/feed 5 http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/calle-del-atletico-madrid-atletico-vs-villarreal-preview.html http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/calle-del-atletico-madrid-atletico-vs-villarreal-preview.html#comments Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:29:37 +0000 Javier http://villarreal.theoffside.com/villarreal-team-news/calle-del-atletico-madrid-atletico-vs-villarreal-preview.html

Here we go once again. Atletico Madrid. I’ve been waiting for this game since Tuesday after our Champions League win. The last time we faced the bear crested players was last year, and ended up in an epic 4-4 match. No one really saw that coming, at least none of us here on theoffside. I expect better from our side. We’ve grown and progressed as a team since the start of the season. I don’t think too many teams can actually say that about themselves (I’m looking at you Espanyol). We do have a bit of bad luck right now with some of our players.

Injuries

Angel Lopez- “Angel has been ruled out for the next match against Atletico Madrid at the Vicente Calderon as a drag on the muscle overload isquiotibiales of the left leg that forced him to leave the pitch before the end of the Panathinaikos game (which could be expected in conditions for the next day).”

Joseba Llorente- “Joseba Llorente suffers from a tension in the internal lateral ligament of the right knee from the Olympic Stadium in Athens and is subject to what can be assumed that the pain of the injury..”
(All translated and taken from the Villarreal Official website. http://www.villarrealcf.es/)

Just our luck right? Both are being treated right now and could make it to the pitch. I wouldn’t really want to risk two of our good players for this. Manuel Pellegrini is most likely getting Mario Gaspar and also Kiko to sub for these guys from the Villarreal B team. I know Atletico will be hard, but I don’t think we need to freak out. However all this news isn’t bad…well most of it is, but Rossi did an minor interview for Villarrealcf.es, telling about his match coming up at Atletico and how he feels about it.

Giuseppe Rossi will live tomorrow at the Vicente Calderon contrasting sensations. On one side will have good memories of the last victory of the yellow for 3-4 with a goal of his, but on the other side will remember the bitter taste that was in the field of play in which he hurt in the outer meniscus his right knee.
November 4, 2007 was that day, but Rossi continues saying:
“The truth is that I have good and bad memories. I did the first goal, which was very nice, and then won with a good comeback, but bad because it’s where I broke the meniscus of the knee. ”
“We have 3 or 4 low, it is true, but it can not harm us because we have a great template. In addition, we are one hundred percent and we’ll leave it on the field “

Courageous words to the lads in the Yellow Submarine. Got me pumped up at the least. Possible Starting XI.

(4-4-2)
Lopez
Javi Venta – Fuentes – Kiko – Capdevila
Cazorla – Senna – Eguren – Ibagaza
Rossi – Nihat

Thanks again to kqql. He’s gotten me off my somewhat lazy ass and started going at it with this blog. Hopefully I’m doing a better job then before. If I forgot anything please give me a heads up or if I missed anything. Thanks guys, and I do appreciate all the feedback that I get from you. Glad to know someone is reading .
Vamos Villarreal!

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