We all know of the title race and its closeness, the proximity of the points, Atletico with the surprise charge, us and Atleti playing on the final day that could potentially become a season decider. However we have forgotten about the European Struggle and the relegation fight.

We all know that the current top 3 are guaranteed to be 3 out of our 4 UCL representatives.. but who will be our 4th? Lets take it from the highest position and down.

Athletic Bilbao: Current position:4th
Last appearance: 1998 (Last in 1st group stage)

after seasons of up and downs, and missed opportunities.. Bilbao seem to be at the top of there form, with an unbeaten record at home so far and getting a win and draw over Barca and Real Respectively, Bilbao seem to have Cohesion, team spirit, and the right management. The crazy thing is.. this is a team that has there buying options restricted to one tiny part of the world.. imagine the things they can do if they didn't have the basque only policy in place. These guys are something else and it is there spot to lose. However they must preform differently at the end of this season and avoid a collapse like that of 2012.

What titles you won is pretty irellevant in a rivarly, its about which team shows the most passion and fight giving it all.

@Dephased - How is it irrelevant? Between the rivalry the outstanding goal is to win titles, no? Or what has Arsenal been competing for?
"its about which team shows the most passion and fight giving it all." Which in the end wins titles.

@tacuachilo no reason to respond him, he thinks Ibra is better than Messi :). Dont waste your time argumenting with this dephased guy.
Maybe he doesnt like goals and trophies :)....

@Boixosnois:

In 2005/2006, Barcelona only beat Chelsea in a Group game, at the Camp Nou. At Stamford Bridge, Chelsea won.

But, sure, in his early years at Madrid, he didn't have the influence yet to beat Barcelona. But, if you want an overview of how he has fared against Barcelona, both at Madrid and elsewhere, here it is:

@Madrid he won 5, drew 6 and lost 6.
@Chelsea he won 2, drew 2 and lost 2.
@Inter he won 1, drew 1, and lost 2.

You tell me that isn't the legacy of a man who knew how to handle Barcelona, especially when he's knocked them out of the CL twice, and after his bad start at Madrid, he either won or drew his last 5 games against them, in a row. Yes, you read that correctly: Barcelona didn't manage to beat Mourinho's Madrid in any of their last 5 encounters, but he did beat them 3 times (4 times in their last 7 games, with Barca only winning 1).

Sorry, but, Mourinho just knows how to beat Barcelona. He might not do it every time, but, he showed in the last 3 years that they can be beaten, consistently.

@tiki: Are you really this stupid?

No, you did NOT beat the same Bayern. You beat a Bayern who had only 2 of their current first team. That's like beating Barcelona before Ronaldinho.

Also?

"Your diagnostic : Alzhaymer :). 3 CL finals won out of 3 against the mighty English sides."

Your diagnostifc? UNABLE TO FUKKING READ. I already said ASIDE from Barcelona.

Seriously, I'm annoyed with you now., Shut the fukk up before I really embarrass you.

Bayern are actually better than every team, until a team proves the oposite...

Look what you said.
''Yes. Which is why he\'s been defeating Barcelona since 2005. Almost ten years of beating the best team in the world, in fact.''

Well actually no lodatz, this is no 10 years of beating, we were ahead by games won and trophies against him but he did pretty good against us, not the stupidity you are writing.
and his stats got boosted by last year wins, when there were any physical or tactic opposition. There was no exploit from Mourinho at Real Madrid even if he did everything possible to win silverwares.
If your memory is working, he went crazy in Guardiolas Era and couldnt win the league after being champions.
He did good, but im not sure RM followers will have the same vision as you.
Let a Real Madrid fan post you their results against the cream of Europeen football as you say. They played lately, everton,Chelsea, Man United, Man City, Tottenham... Go look the results yourself.
Unless you have a table of a big domination by English clubs for Spanish clubs, dream will stay dreams...
And for Europa League, Spanish 5th-8th teams did great lately considering their low budget...

"They played lately, everton,Chelsea, Man United, Man City, Tottenham... "

They played Everton and Chelsea in an utterly meaningless pre-season tour, they played Tottenham 3 years ago (and against 10 men), needed a crappy ref to squeeze past a clearly superior United, and benefited from City being inexplicably poor in Europe the last two seasons.

Go ahead, let them be posted. None of it changes the fact that I'm right, and you know it.

Maybe they'll get to a CL final this year. If so, it will be their first in 12 years.

"Well actually no lodatz, this is no 10 years of beating, we were ahead by games won and trophies against him but he did pretty good against us, not the stupidity you are writing."

How about the stupidity that YOU are writing?

Mourinho has consistently beaten Barcelona over the last 10 years. This is an undeniable FACT, when shown by the results list. Just because you don't like it does not mean that it's not true. He has also knocked Barcelona out of the Champions League twice. Barca have only knocked him out once.

Just give up.

''They played Everton and Chelsea in an utterly meaningless pre-season tour, they played Tottenham 3 years ago (and against 10 men), needed a crappy ref to squeeze past a clearly superior United, and benefited from City being inexplicably poor in Europe the last two seasons.''
Lol its raining excuses :). I have plenty of excuses of our losses too but i wont play that game.
I give up, too boring :) mate.
Write something to have the last word, i wont respond.

actually lodatz.. ur wrong .. we beat them in R16.. check it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005%E2%80%9306_UEFA_Champions_League

Also barca knocked him out twice, as manager of Chelsea in 05-06 and in 2010-2011 as manager of Madrid.

@Boix: My mistake. you're right.

So, it stands as even, then, between Barca and Jose... ;)

I'll be hoping to talk la liga on this forum outside of the highlight reels, so i might say a few things about La liga here.. i hope any other fans who are interested in Liga can join in :)

Sociedad squandered a chance to take advantage of Villareal's defeat and now Bilbao can punish them both if they win at Celta tommorow.. im kind of hoping Bilbao lose to keep it close.

anyway, celta has really gotta win to stay clear of the Drop.. they are not too far from it .

Both Osasuna and Almeria escaped bigtime this week,both with crucial wins. That sucks for Granada cause they're asses lost. I don't want Valladolid to go down or Betis.. but im really scared for Betis.. i cant believe there doing so bad.

Im really happy we beat Sevilla not only for the 3 points and topping the table but cause we kept the UEL race close and boosted Valencia and Espanyol's chances now.. again im really hoping Espanyol can pull through and stay in the race to qualify, cause i would love the Barcelona derby to be more meaningful for both sides.

Excuses, excuses..... We beat City and Spurs fair and square in the CL. Everton and Chelsea didn't stand a chance against us in preseason, and the ref may have won us the game against United, but we were a completely off-form Real Madrid side while United were a top-of-the-table team.

See how arguments can be sided from different perspectives Lodatz? In the end, all that matters is the scoreline. We all argue about referee decisions here and there, but unless they're seriously game-changing and seriously controversial (e.g. Nani vs. Madrid, Chelsea vs. Barca 08/09), they don't matter. We beat Spurs because Crouch was an idiot to dive into two challenges like that so quickly. The referee didn't do anything wrong there. Therefore, the 5-0 scoreline is perfectly justified. Same goes for City. We were both off-form second-placed teams in our leagues, and we came out on top by 4-3.

"See how arguments can be sided from different perspectives Lodatz? In the end, all that matters is the scoreline."

Really? That's all you've got, as a 'different perspective'? Great way to basically ignore everything that's relevant and which doesn't back your stance up. Really impressed.

"We beat Spurs because Crouch was an idiot to dive into two challenges like that so quickly."

Oh please. One of the dives was so ridiculous that Marcelo is still in orbit, and his twin has been playing for Madrid ever since. ;p But hey, at least you concede that losing our (only) striker at the time in the 11th minute was a chief reason for you thrashing us. ;)

Besides. This was, let's not forget, almost 3 seasons ago, when our goalkeeper was Gomes, our RB was Hutton (who? exactly) and our midfield champion was Wilson Palacios.

ALSO besides, I've never once claimed that Spurs were one of the top teams in Europe, nor that they were an equal match for Madrid in the first place.

So.... you just had your argument taken away from you. Sorry about that. :)

There's no 'excuse' in pointing out that the games Madrid won this summer were utterly meaningless, and only a fool would attempt to use them as a credible basis for their case. Because, you know what else happened in pre-season? Madrid drew with Lyons, but hey, they did manage to beat the LA Galaxy. Whew, what a historic victory.

Seriously, this argument is dumb. The Galacticos had the best squad on then planet, didn't they? How much did they win? When Madrid gets to a CL final again, then we can finally welcome them back to the Big Time.

Btw, is this what you really want, Dynast? Do you want every thread to constantly be about this?

No?

Then how about, rather than stirring it up again, just tell tiki_taka to stop deliberately picking fukking fights about it. You've said to me before that not every La Liga fan is like knibis. Well, you know what? The ones on here sure seem to be.

@Lodatz

I'm not the one who starts it. I throw in my opinion where I feel the need to. Obviously our opinions here do not go down the same path, which is why we disagree.

In my opinion, Madrid are among the world's top 5-6 teams, and we beat Spurs and Manchester City fair and square.

You call this a dive? Marcelo just avoided the challenge, that's all. It was reckless from Crouch, and deserving of a second yellow (or straight red, whichever he got for that one. He would've been sent off either way).

And if you think Knibis and us are the same, then maybe you're the one missing out on something. :)

Haha drag me into it...? Wtf..
Whats wrong with a la liga fan like knibis, all i have ever done is defending that one league is better with reasonable arguments, nvm stick to the original topic...