Madrid replied to Barça’s excellent win over Valencia on Wednesday night by demolishing Malaga on Pellegrini’s return to the Bernabeu, whilst neighbours Atletico Madrid and Getafe could only draw. Villarreal got back into winning ways, beating Hercules, but Bilbao’s failure to beat Zaragoza means they’ve lost three on the run, with the points for Aguirre’s team lifting them out of the bottom three.

Weakened Malaga cave in at Bernabeu

The pressure was again on Real Madrid after last weekend’s slip up in La Coruña and they responded with a 7-0 thrashing over a much weakened Malaga, whose boss Manuel Pellegrini admitted: “we didn’t come here looking for points –I wanted to reserve players for the Osasuna game(this weekend) and we rested six players”. Just to make things even easier for Mourinho’s side, Gaspar was sent off for the visitors who played out the game with just 9 men after Cafa had been injured. Cristiano Ronaldo limped off with a hamstring injury after scoring his third goal of the night.

Villarreal back to winning ways

Villarreal put an end to their four game run without a win by beating Hercules 1-0 thanks to a Rossi goal –his 13th of the campaign and are now a clear 10 points ahead of fifth pace Espanyol and just a point behind Valencia. For Hercules it was their third game on the run without a goal- they’ve scored in just one of their last eight, in the only win since early January against Zaragoza, and now find themselves fourth from bottom just a point above the drop zone. Bilbao missed the chance to leapfrog Espanyol into fifth when they went down 2-1 to Zaragoza despite going ahead with, inevitably, a Llorente strike. The Basque centre forward has now scored 15 La Liga goals, but Wednesday night’s wasn’t enough as Bilbao slumped to their third defeat on the row. The win lifts Zaragoza up to 15th on 27 points ahead of Saturday’s game at the Nou Camp.

Atletico’s poor run continues

Neither Atletico Madrid nor Real Sociedad were able to keep up with the UEFA spot challengers, with Atletico drawing 1-1 in Getafe and Real being held by the same score by Llevant at Anoeta. Atletico Madrid have now won just one in their last seven games and sit in eighth place, level on points with Real and 15 points off the Champions League spots.