FC Barcelona cut the lead on the top of the league to five points with a rather scrappy 5-3 win. Real madrid will have a chance to extend the lead, but for the time being we are five points below them. A hat-trick from Lionel Messi and one each from Xavi and Tello gave us a a deserving victory. It was a bit scrappy in some sense - we lead 2-0 with Granada completely out of the picture, then let them come back and make teh scoreline 2-2 but we woke up enough to finish off the game. All the eyes were on Messi building into this match. A recently conducted study has revealed that Cesar, the club's official top scorer has only scored 232 goals instead of the earlier believed 235. That meant Messi needed only one more goal to equalise that tally. The starting eleven selected by Guardiola was Valdes, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Adriano, Keita, Thiago, Xavi, Sanchez, Messi and Cuenca. Barca players lined up with "Fabrice. We are with you" T-Shirt showing their support for the Bolton player Fabrice Muamba, whose condition is said to be improving at the moment. Granada players lined up with a message showing their support for Eric Abidal, our King.
