The draw for the last 32 of the Copa del Rey was made today and Barça have been paired with Benidorm CD. The first game will be played on October 29th with the return at Camp Nou on November 12th. The date could vary a day either way depending on the TV companies.

Barça last played Benidorm in the 1998/99 Copa del Rey winning 3-0 at home and 0-1 away. Benidorm play in Group III of the Segunda Division B and are currently third from bottom with 6 points from 7 games.

Here is the full draw: 

Poli Ejido - Villarreal
Real Unión - Real Madrid
Benidorm - Barcelona
Orihuela - Atlético
Portugalete - Valencia
Ponferradina - Sevilla
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The LFP have announced next week's kick off times a day early this week. Barça's away game at Athletic Bilbao will take place on Sunday 19th October with the kick off time set for 7pm local time. The Madrid derby between Atletico and Real Madrid will be played on the Saturday at 8pm. A good week to go three points above our biggest rival.

Bad news for Pedro Rodriguez who was injured yesterday training with Spain's under-21 team. Tests today showed a torn muscle in his right thigh and the estimated time for recovery is four weeks. Let's hope he makes a full and speedy recovery.

Having sorted out the polls I have now managed to get the statistics page up and running. You can click on statistics at the top of the page and then you can check the stats for both this season and last season, or if you want to go immediately to this season's stats click here

While we are on the subject of improvements to the blog please feel free to send comments with your suggestions. Please don't expect me to follow all your ideas but I promise to consider all of them and if I have technical difficulties getting things done I will ask the guys at Oleole if they can help sort things out.

Yes, I know it's been a while, but finally we have things sorted to begin putting regular polls on the blog again. The first poll is on how well you think Pep Guardiola has done as coach so far this season. Please don't rate him just on yesterday's performance or on his dress sense. Has he the tactical nous we need, the motivational skills or the ability to read a game and make the right substitutions? You be the judge, click on one of the answers in the sidebar and then click the button in the bottom right hand corner to cast your vote.

Barça destroyed Atletico Madrid tonight with a superb display of attacking football. If in the last two games we had to wait until injury time to seal the three points, tonight the victory was all but sewn up after just ten minutes. Marquez, Eto'o and Messi put Barça 3-0 in just eight minutes and by the half hour we were 5-1 up.

Games between these two clubs have a history of producing high scoring, incident packed games and tonight's clash was no exception. Leo Messi played a blinder and won the battle with Kun Agüero hands down, but the performance of unsung players such as Eric Abidal and Eidur Gudjohnsen was just as pleasing to see.

Barça go into the last game before the international break on the back of five straight wins. However, the last three of those victories have all relied on late winners against Betis, Espanyol and Shakhtar Donetsk, and with an opponent of the quality of Atletico Madrid, Barça will have to perform well to extend the winning streak to six games.

As has become the norm in recent years Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta have all been named in the Spanish squad for next week's international matches against Estonia (Oct 11) and Belgium (Oct 15). There is no place, however, for Bojan Krkic who returns to the under-21 squad for the two games against Switzerland (Oct 11 and 14). Also named in the under-21 squad are Gerard Piqué, Sergio Busquets and Pedro.

Two late goals from substitute Leo Messi turned defeat into victory for Barça tonight in Ukraine. From a fan's point of view there is nothing much better than grabbing an injury time winner, so to get two in a week is pretty special. However, the team did not play well and much of that has to go down to the unusual 3-5-2 formation that Pep Guardiola adopted for this game. Shakhtar took the lead just before half time and in the second half Barça struggled to find a way through. It took a bit of luck in the 87th minute as the Shakhtar defence relaxed at a throw in, believing Barça should give the ball back, for Barça to equalize, and then a bit of pure class from Messi for the late late winner.