Last season, its seem to be just a solo title race of Barcelona alone, as they went into christmas break with 41 points, 12 points clear off 2nd place Real Madrid with 29 points already. Despite Real Madrid trying to catch up, by reducing the gaps to 4 points by the end of April 09, by facing Barcelona next with 5 more matches to go. But Barcelona manage to humiliate Real Madrid with a 6-2 scoreline at Bernabeu Stadium and went on to win the La Liga title with 9 points lead.

This season, both Barcelona and Real Madrid started off with perfect win of 6 matches and 5 matches respectively. But soon Sevilla beaten Real Madrid 2-1 at home, and Valencia held  Barcelona off with a goalless draw to show that they are capable of challenging the title too. Currently its 5 points seperating the top 4 in the spanish leagues with leader Barcelona yet to suffer a defeat yet.

Perhaps with Champion League not going smoothly for the Spanish top 2, both of them still far from securing a last 16 spots. Their form has been dropping, from their last 8 matches, Madrid had suffer 3 defeats and 2 draw, while Barcelona suffering 1 defeats and 3 draw. Another spanish Champion League team, Aletico Madrid fared even worst, with just 1 victory from 10 league games, and yet to win in Champion League groups phrase, currently lie in the relegation zone. Sevilla are the only spanish team which already secure last 16 spots in Champion league with 2 game remaining, and is putting pressure on the top 2 side in the league by staying right behind.

Sevilla has been playing European football for the past 6 years, and won Uefa Cup in a consecutive year 05/06 and 06/07 season. They are now ready to push for the title as their player has grown more mature and skilled compare to before. Keyplayer Navas, Fabiano and Kanoute are all enjoying great form at the moment too.

Valencia hasn’t been challenging the title since they last won it on 03/04 season following by the departure of manager Rafael Benitez to Liverpool. With Valencia under financial crisis, they still managed to keep hold of their star players like Mata, David Silva, David Villa and Joaquin. David Villa are currently joint topscorer with Messi and Ibrahimovic at 7 goals each. If they can kept off David Villa suitor away in January, can’t see why not they can pose a threat in challenging the title.

Real Madrid recent drop of form is mainly due to the missing of C.Ronaldo who is still recovering from an injury. He scored 5 goals out of the 4 matches from the start of the season. But a big teams like Real Madrid shouldn’t be dependence on just 1 players to bring the team up.

Barcelona forms are still good in the leagues, just lack of luck in Champion League. Barcelona strikeforce are still fearsome as the combination of Messi, Ibrahimovic and Keita has already bagged a total 20 goals in the La Liga league, more than any other teams other than Real Madrid has scored in the league. They are still my favourite in winning the La Liga Trophy again this year, whereby they got enough depth in all area. Their new rising stars Pedro has already bagged 7 goals in 8 competition this season already, and might be included in the Spain squad for World Cup campaign.