Liga Española Matchday 8

Barcelona continued their great run with the 6-1 destruction of Real Zaragoza. Sevilla and Real Madrid both got 0-0 draws against bad teams. I'd love to talk up the league and discuss how exciting it will be but to be honest so far my favorite league is shaping up to play out like last year. Barça are currently 3 points clear of Real Madrid and 6 clear of Sevilla. They have looked consistently a lot better than those two rivals and certainly seem far less prone to drop points as Sevilla and Real Madrid did last weekend. For evidence of that look at the Copa del Rey result. Real Madrid lost 4-0 to Segunda B (third flight) team Alcorcon!

I think Barça will probably continue to pull away and a win in the Camp Nou rendition of the Clásico November 29th could put them 9 or 10 points clear. Last year, Barcelona went 12 clear of Real Madrid after a 2-0 win over the Merengues at the Camp Nou on December 13th. At that point Real Madrid were 6th in the table. From that point on they were very strong, but could not make up that deficit. We shall see if history repeats itself.

Rankings:


O Rank: rank of team in scoring
D Rank: rank of team in preventing scoring
EGD: expected goal differential if they played a full season at the level the results thus far have shown

As you can see, Barcelona moved to the top of the rankings in both categories. Like I said, it's shaping up to look like last season. Atleti and Villarreal moved up a fair bit. It'll be interesting to see where they are in a few weeks.