{"id":60846,"date":"2018-10-01T15:31:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T13:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2018\/10\/01\/la-liga-boring-uncompetitive-and-all-that-hang-on-sid-lowe\/"},"modified":"2018-10-01T15:31:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T13:31:44","slug":"la-liga-boring-uncompetitive-and-all-that-hang-on-sid-lowe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=60846","title":{"rendered":"La Liga: boring, uncompetitive and all that. Hang on \u2026 | Sid Lowe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just seven weeks in, no one is winless in Spain and no one is unbeaten either. Is this season competitive rather than cheap?On Saturday afternoon, leaders Barcelona only managed a 1-1 home draw against 15th-placed Athletic Club Bilbao and had to come from behind for that; without a win in three, they dropped their seventh point in six days. On Saturday night, Real Madrid failed to score for the second game running, drawing 0-0 with Atl\u00e9tico Madrid; they\u2019ve won just one in four now, while their city rivals left the Bernab\u00e9u unbeaten for a sixth successive season but have only won three from seven. And in between those matches, Sevilla beat Eibar at Ipurua, taking them third and on to 17 goals in 10 days, including three against Madrid. Before that, they hadn\u2019t won in three, collecting a solitary point. They hadn\u2019t even scored.On Sunday evening, Alav\u00e9s had the chance to go joint top with Barcelona, a club with a budget 16 times bigger. It wasn\u2019t just an early-season quirk: since Abelardo Fern\u00e1ndez took over 31 weeks before, only Barcelona, Madrid and Atl\u00e9tico had more points. All Alav\u00e9s had to do now was beat Levante, who\u2019d slipped into the relegation zone without a win in five, but they didn\u2019t: 1-0 up early, another wonderful delivery from Ibai G\u00f3mez headed in by Ruben Sobrino, they were beaten 2-1. Led by Rub\u00e9n Rochina, Levante scored twice before half-time, Jason and To\u00f1o Garc\u00eda getting the goals. \u201cThey were better than us,\u201d Abelardo said. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to win.\u201d Continue reading&#8230;<br \/>\nVia: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/blog\/2018\/oct\/01\/la-liga-boring-uncompetitive-and-all-that-hang-on-\" target=\"_blank\">La Liga: boring, uncompetitive and all that. Hang on \u2026 | Sid Lowe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just seven weeks in, no one is winless in Spain and no one is unbeaten either. Is this season competitive rather than cheap?On Saturday afternoon, leaders Barcelona only managed a 1-1 home draw against 15th-placed Athletic Club Bilbao and had to come from behind for that; without a win in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}