Llorente: Vicente Guaita stays

Valencia CF president publicly stated today that goalkeeper Vicente Guaita will stay in Valencia CF and that FC Barcelona can forget about him.

Manuel Llorente as some of you may now has been under pressure to have more Spanish players in the squad, especially Valencianistas and so expect Diego Alves to leave, rather than Guaita. Now they may both stay, but that is very unlikely and both of them are likely to not be satisfied with that kind of decision as none of them really has a firm grim on the starting place and one week playing and then not playing doesn't give any of the goalkeepers momentum and to keep their form.

So now we know that Vicente Guaita is going to stay for many more years as Llorente said and expect Diego Alves to be sold, but even more than that expect several new Spanish reinforcements to come in the summer.

Banega apologizes, to be fined by the club

Ever Banega to feature vs FC Barcelona

Ever Banega took to twitter to apologize for arriving late in training. He said that he was sorry for his conduct, that it will not happen again and how he only thinks of beating FC Barcelona. He also didn't appear to have been drunk, so obviously some fabricated media controversy.

Valencia CF coach decided to put Ever Banega in the squad to face FC Barcelona as he is one of the key players and punishing him with not playing will be more of a punishment to the club, rather than the player.

Last match when Valencia CF and FC Barcelona met it was a very close match and FC Barcelona barely won over Valencia CF due to the fact the referring was so poor or nefarious.

Ever Banega drunk and late for training

Ever Banega came in late and drunk at today's training and Valencia CF coach just confirmed that he was indeed late and that the club will give him a punishment, though he said he hasn't decided yet if he is going to remove Banega from the team to face FC Barcelona tomorrow.

He said he and the assistant Voro would consider all options, but that Banega was needed to the team, so a decision to drop him out of the team would be less likely.

He went on to comments about Barcelona, saying they are a dangerous team, but that they are not invincible as shown by their recent loss to Real Sociedad. He said that the biggest danger does come from Lionel Messi and that the defenders will have to really be up to the challenge to stop Lionel Messi.

He also commented about Gago, saying that its not a big loss that he was loaned out and that his position is easily covered by several players.

Llorente promises quality reinforcements in the summer

Valencia CF president gave a press conference and it was mostly about the financial situation, at least that's where the media took it, but it was interesting as he also said how there would be quality reinforcements in the summer and he guaranteed that the team would be a lot stronger next season.

In fact he was asked about the finances and he claimed that the club is in good shape and that even though there was still a big debt problem, the club is not in a crisis and that said he felt he did a good job as the president of the club in the past 4 years.

Obviously as he was pressured about his presidency and the summer elections, he said he would step down in someone came in with tons of cash, but that that wasn't going to happen and then he went on to say that there will be quality reinforcements coming in the summer.

David Albelda won't renew his contract

David Albelda announced that he won't be renewing his contract with Valencia CF. He announced: "My idea is to finish the season and think about other things, there is 95% chance that I will leave."

"I'm thinking about going abroad, I've never played outside of Spain, but the decision can change", he added "I've always wanted to leave while I feel good". No doubt he wants to experience life outside Spain and I can see him going in Italy where his age players play all the time, maybe even England in one of the weaker teams.

So there you have it, huge decision by David Albelda to not renew his contact. If he does end up leaving and there is still 5% chance that he can stay, but is he leaves it will be very hard to find a suitable replacement for him as he has been a rock at the back and has shielded Valencia's defenses perfectly for over a decade.

Offers rejected for Rami and Cissokho

Valencia CF rejected last day offers for Adil Rami and Aly Cissokho. Russian power house Anzhi sent a last day 12 million offer in a bid to get Adil Rami, but Valencia CF obviosly rejected that offer, first of because it was too small and the team only has 3 central defenders.

Valencia CF got as much as 8 offers from West Ham for Aly Cissokho and Valencia CF considered the offers, but Aly Cissokho said he wanted to stay at Valencia CF and Valverde said he would use him more often at left back, but as a central defender as well.

As you know Cissokho was almost exclusevely used by Pellegrino, but since the arrival of Valverde he has opted out for Guardado at the left back spot and Cissokho has found it hard for playing time, which will only increase with the arrival of Jeremy Mathieu back in the squad.

Record month of January

This past month of January has been record breaking in visits to the blog. In fact the past 3 months have all been record breaking, but this month was significant with a big mobile audience for the first time. In fact 1/4 of the audience came from mobile devices landing directly to the mobile sites.

The blog had over 45.000 pageviews in total as measured by blogger, this includes mobile.

The biggest article was the match preview of real madrid vs valencia cf in the first leg of the cup with over 600 pageviews. The most read page was the transfers page, though unfortunately it was a non eventful winter in the transfer market, with only Javi Guego reaching a personal agreement with Valencia CF, but would only come in the summer as a free agent.

As far as the browsers go, Google Chrome was the dominant browser, followed by Firefox.

Here are the top 10 visitor countries according to blogger, though I have different data from Google analytics

Entry Pageviews

United States 8443

United Kingdom 3336

Netherlands 1453

Spain 1322

Sweden 1247

Norway 1070

Malaysia 948

Germany 763

Belgium 499

Indonesia 414

Here are the Google Analytics stats:

1. United States 1,279

2. Malaysia 467

3. Indonesia 378

4. Spain 282

5. Trinidad and Tobago 230

6. Poland 221

7. Egypt 207

8. (not set) 168

9. Bulgaria 152

10. Lithuania     150

About 20% of the visitors were from the USA.

The longest average visitors duration was from Ghana at 24 minutes, followed by Zimbabwe with 10 minutes.