Garrido still upbeat; radio networks plan lawsuits demanding access to matches again: October 27 news

The post-mortem after the Real Madrid loss:

After the match Fernando Roig spoke with C+ Radio and said Garrido's job was safe regardless of what happens against Rayo, the team needs to work hard and move forward under him. Is this the dreaded "vote of confidence", or is he convinced Garrido can turn this around? Garrido says in two or three weeks we will be clicking, and Cani and Camuñas joined Ruben (earlier) in defending Garrido.

Garrido, for his part, appeared late for his press conference, spoke very quickly (even for him) and did refer to the possible offside on the first goal and the poor offside call that denied Marco Ruben a one-on-one. But, other than that he said basically that he's convinced Villarreal are doing things right and will turn things around soon. We can only hope.

Interestingly, he gave a very long press conference the day before where he said a lot of what we've been saying here: "I accept my responsibility, but I know I have a team that can play better" and also mentioned the lack of a core team coming into the season.

After Mallorca lost to Sporting, Villarreal are now officially in the relegation zone. Hard to understand--this is far too talented a team.

Other news: the "war" between the radio stations and La Liga is now headed to court. For those of you who don't know, the broadcasters used to cover the matches without problem but Mediapro, the (operating under the bankruptcy code) company which controls La Liga's TV rights, decided that they owned radio rights as well and that the radio stations should pay to broadcast matches.

The clubs, fearful that they wouldn't receive their TV money if they backed the radio folks against Mediapro, decided not to let the radio correspondents cover the matches. In early October the radio networks offered to pay for using the media facilities at the various grounds, but maintains Mediapro does not control radio broadcast rights, which should continue to be free.

If the Spanish league were run by businesspeople with both morals and balls, this whole thing could have been quickly resolved. But, since the league is essentially controlled by Mediapro, the networks' proposal has been ignored, so the radio broadcasters have now decided to sue. Of course, they can't sue Mediapro directly, so they are planning to take the clubs to court, one by one, claiming they're being denied access.

The sad part is of course that at a time when attendances are falling and the economic malaise in Spain is getting worse if anything, the average fan can't hear a broadcast of a match.

Sidarth will be posting shortly with some other reaction.