Thirteen - unlucky for some

Quite a decent week for Barcelona, to quote a phrase. A 2-5 win in Lisbon in midweek followed by a 0-3 result in the Sánchez Pizjuan in Sevilla - never an easy place to visit - means that all is tickety-boo on the Catalan front. Messi even had time to lift his shirt and show us his flat tummy after his first goal, which was a little nod to the commentary team of La Sexta TV channel, who had suggested a while ago that he might have been a little overweight. Fat or thin, there's no stopping him, or his team at the moment.

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Time is running out for Schuster after another defeat.

Just as well then that injury-hit Villarreal got back on the winning trail, with a 1-2 win at bottom club Recreativo de Huelva, with Valencia sweating buckets of blood to beat a decent-looking Betis side and Real Madrid, of course, losing horribly to Schuster's ex-team Getafe.

As the German inexplicably announced after the game, 'The defeat doesn't hurt because I could see it coming'. Fine. Perhaps next time he shouldn't even bother to turn up. Barça have opened up a six point lead over fourth-placed Madrid, which is a classic clause in Spanish football-speak. It suggests, as you know, that Real Madrid remain Barcelona's main threat and challenge this season, but at the moment that looks an unlikely scenario. With their injury-prone squad, their confidence at a low ebb and the rest of the teams in La Liga aware of their weaknesses, mid-table looks a more likely destiny for them. It may not happen - since the forces that be tend to ensure that things turn around. At the moment, only Villarreal look a plausible candidate to hang onto Barça's coat-tails, as they did with Madrid last season. But let's have a look down in the basement this week, at the teams that are finding it hard going after the first thirteen games - unlucky for some.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the relegation zone is that only one of the newly promoted sides, Numancia, is currently hanging around there, and they were the team most tipped to survive this season. Certainly, few gave Málaga a chance, especially after they were promoted in controversial circumstances, with rumours of them having paid off Sevilla B to throw a game against them.

The allegations were never proved, but it cast a shadow over their summer and with few new significant arrivals they were expected to struggle. But 18 points so far keeps them at a reasonable distance from the bottom and this weekend they proved their non-relegation credentials by beating another side who appear to be on the wane. The other promoted side, Sporting, who seemed to be on a hiding to nothing in the first few weeks, have turned things dramatically around and are knocking on Uefa's gates, incredibly enough.

Osasuna are on their ninth consecutive season in the top flight and three seasons ago finished a best-ever fourth, but things seem to be on the wobble. Sacking manager Cuco Ziganda might have been a good idea if the replacement had been another keen young buck trying to make a name for himself, but Pamplona is a cold place to move to just as winter is approaching. José Antonio Camacho seems to have fancied the challenge, but gives every impression in his press conferences of regretting the decision. The team is not his, obviously, and is stocked with forwards who have plenty of top-flight experience but for one reason or another have never quite convinced, in the long-term.

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Cuco Ziganda was sacked by Osasuna.

Walter Pandiani, Santi Ezquerro, Javi Portillo - all sound top players when the going's good and the rest of the team is pulling its weight. But the creative department in midfield is practically non-existent, and the team will need to rely on the hostile atmosphere of its tightly-packed home stands to intimidate enough visiting teams to concede the points necessary for them to stay up.

One win (last week) in thirteen games looks a bit dismal, César Cruchaga is not the commanding defender he once was, and Camacho, as ever, doesn't seem to offer much apart from waving his arms around like a desperate market trader at the end of a bad day on the stock exchange. He may not last the course. Like a Spanish Kevin Keegan, when things don't go his way he rarely hangs around.

Perhaps the only light on the horizon is the fact that despite their own lack of goals, they haven't conceded a disastrous amount (sixteen - four less than Real Madrid), and 25% of those hit their net this weekend, at Málaga. This does say something for their two goalkeepers, Roberto and Ricardo. The team below them, and bottom of the pile, Recreativo, have one point less and have scored an even paltrier six goals, with twenty conceded. Weirdly enough, they won their opening game of the season, 0-1 up at near neighbours Betis, but it's been all downhill since then.

As you may know, by finishing 16th last season, they managed to stay in the top flight for more than one season, for the first time in their extremely long and rather mundane history. Twice before they'd emerged from the choppy waters of Segunda 'A', only to immediately sink back under the waves. Their more natural habitat of the 'silver' league would seem to be calling them back, although once again they don't seem a side excessively easy to beat. Goalkeeper Asier Riesgo on loan from Real Sociedad, is proving his top-flight credentials, but no-one seems able to hit the net at the other end. They could have done without losing Sinama Pongolle to Atlético Madrid in the summer, and Javi Guerrero, a decent mucker who seems to have been around for ever, can't really do it on his own.

The young central midfielder Sebastian Nayar, upon whose slight Argentinean shoulders plenty of hopes were founded this season, finally played his first game of the campaign when he substituted Javi Fuego in the second half, but the controversy surrounding his signing from Boca Juniors (who disputed the move by claiming that he was contracted to them until 2012) seems likely to re-surface. Manager Luis Alacaraz, on his second spell there as a manager, seems to have a decent record of taking sides up from the Second Division - he did this in his previous incarnation at the club, as he did with Murcia - but then he seems to have problems keeping them there. History would appear to be repeating itself.

Numancia, third from bottom but last season's undisputed 2nd Division champions, started with a bang by beating Barcelona in their modest home, 'Los Pajaritos' (the little birds), with its 9,500 capacity, its bleak rural surroundings and its homely appearance as proof of the fact that the rich get richer and the poor just hang in there - but something still suggests that they have the guts and the will to survive.

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Numancia have played well against the top teams.

Like Recreativo, their seasons in the First Division sun have been few and far between (this is their fourth) and they rarely stay for long. Last time was in 2005, but although they remain an unglamorous side to play against, and hardly a stadium-filling name, their very presence in La Liga keeps things in perspective.

They have some honest players who have done time in the top flight but never quite proved themselves - Sergio Boris and José Barkero both played for Real Sociedad and had been tipped to do better. They both seem to have settled on Soria's wilder soil and gelled with a squad of whom seventeen players were in the side that came up last season, five of them locals. There are no stars, no names. One of their forwards, the honest but limited Gorka Brit, has flitted around a whole host of Second Division sides before finally getting a chance to play a whole season in the top flight. They're hungry and they're motivated, and it might just be enough.

It might be enough because the side above them, Espanyol seem to be in free fall. Along with Athletic Bilbao, they are looking like serious relegation contenders, despite the latter's 2-0 win over Numancia on Sunday. Espanyol lost at home to Sporting in a game that they hoped would help them to recover, and their manager, 'Tintin' Márquez, was sacked. With local hero Tamudo injured, and looking past his best anyway, Albert Riera gone to Liverpool and Ivan de la Peña rarely fit enough to contribute, things seem to be going downhill on the yawning terraces of Montjuic.

Christmas is coming, and nobody wants to get too separated from the pack. Those still down at the bottom by Yuletide have a definite tendency to stay there. The prospects for sides dropping out of the First Division, in these times of crisis, are as bleak as the hills that surround Numancia. They, and the other more modest outfits that flit around in the shadows of La Liga's nether regions will want to get things going as soon as possible, before motivation wanes and time runs out.