A very relative type of slide

Remember last summer, when La Liga had, supposedly, turned into the Scottish Premier League? We were told that the Clasico alone would decide the championship, that the rest of the Spanish clubs were merely a succession of creampuffs, designated cannon fodder for Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho. So roll on next Saturday night when Real Madrid host Barcelona in Act I of the title decider?

Not quite. Because despite the fact that the cumulative salaries of the forwards alone at both clubs are more than the entire wage bill of the other 18 Liga teams, the dominance is not as total as you might think. After 13 games this year, both Real Madrid and Barcelona had fewer points than they did last season (a whopping nine fewer in Barca's case). And, going into the weekend, the third-placed side, Valencia, were seven points back, just like the third-placed team in England, Tottenham (though they have a game in hand).

What's more, Barcelona could win the Clasico and still find themselves three points behind Real Madrid, a possibility that few would have seen coming in the summer. Certainly not in August, when Mourinho announced that his team had "closed the gap" only to go out and lose the Spanish SuperCup over two legs to Barca. What made that setback even more frustrating – and, possibly, what prompted his eye-poking shenanigans at the final whistle – was the fact that Real had actually played exceptionally well and yet seemed no closer to the defending champions.

But plenty has happened since then. The SuperCup defeats brought out the worst in Mourinho and his Barca-baiting referee-sniping paranoia. It got so bad that two of his veterans effectively said "enough!"

His goalkeeper, Iker Casillas, reached out to Barca's Xavi, telling him that, while the sporting rivalry endured, he felt bad at the way that situation had got out of hand. And Sergio Ramos upset the applecart when he said: "You know, we can't always blame the referees. Sometimes we really should look at ourselves too."

Mourinho could have taken these gestures as acts of insubordination, but, for all his bluster and attitude, Mourinho is an intelligent man who learns from his mistakes. Realising it was time to dial down the pressure and let some air out, he scheduled a double training session and, when the players turned up, treated them to a barbecue instead.

Off the pitch, he's been all sweetness and light. And Real have been looser, more fun to watch and more successful too. The kinder, gentler Special One may be a passing phenomenon, but right now he's yielding results: Madrid have won 13 straight in all competitions.

Guardiola, on the other hand, has experienced a wobble, though it's only a wobble by Barca standards. Last weekend, they lost their first match of the season, 0-1 at Getafe. And while they've won 13 of their last 16, they haven't looked like the steamroller of past seasons. Leo Messi has put up his usual Xbox numbers – 26 goals in 22 matches in all competitions – but David Villa has slowed down and fellow strikers Pedro and Alexis Sanchez have both missed chunks of the season through injury, as have Cesc Fabregas, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol. The latter have led Guardiola – ever the innovator – to rethink his defensive scheme, experimenting with a previously unseen 3-4-3.

Don't feel too sorry for him though. The central defenders are now fit, as is Sanchez, who bagged two in midweek. And Barcelona's "cantera" continues to supply in-house talent. 20 year old Thiago Alcantara, who won his first cap this year, has shown he's ready to inherit Xavi's mantle if and when the great man retires. Another 20 year old, winger Isaac Cuenca, has added oomph to the frontline.

The general sense may be that Barcelona are on the slide and Real on the rise. But let's not get too excited: Barca may be sliding, but they're still on the upper reaches of Mount Olympus. The question is whether they're looking down on – or up at – their eternal rivals.

Two things struck me about Friday's Euro 2012 draw. The first was the sheer amount of smiling. Everybody's at it. The "legends" smile as they root around for balls. The coaches and officials smile as they find out who they'll be playing, and, of course, Gianni Infantino – Uefa's General Secretary, who looks like a cross between a foetus and a Bond villain – smiles pretty much continually.

The other is that just about every single "reaction quote" dutifully gathered by the media is utterly meaningless. Nobody will say they're happy because they got drawn with rubbish teams because that would be disrespectful and nobody will say they're worried about a tough draw because that would show weakness. So we get inanities like those spouted by Fabio Capello, who said he was "satisfied" with the draw, as if it really mattered if he was "dissatisfied"...

Will Martin O'Neill do better than Steve Bruce at the Stadium of Light? The answer will probably have a lot to do with whether owner Ellis Short is ready to raid the coffers. Bruce's net spend on transfers at Sunderland was £24 million over two and a half years, nearly all of it in his first summer in charge.

O'Neill's total net spend in the four summers at Aston Villa when he was given free rein in the transfer market was around £100m, or roughly £25m a season, or more per year than Bruce got in his entire stint at Sunderland. This, of course, goes a long way to explaining why he then stormed off in a huff when he was no longer allowed to throw Randy Lerner's money around.

O"Neill, of course, also doubled Villa's wage bill along they way. If Short allows him to do what he did at Villa Park then Sunderland will become a better team and he'll continue burning through cash. If, on the other hand, he keeps him on a shoestring budget like he did in the last 18 months of the Bruce regime, then it's hard to see O'Neill doing much better than his predecessor.