Carlos Puyol and Dani Alves haven't fully convinced at the back of the Barcelona defence so far this season, but the duo's statements to the press this week are even less persuasive.

''It's not a two-team league. There are other teams with a lot of quality, I'm sure that we will suffer some slips and Madrid as well,'' said Puyol.

''It's not a league of two teams," parroted his Brazilian counterpart.

Let's get this straight: It is very much a league of two teams, and nobody from the top down is under any other illusion. This is a division that, for all its glamour and entertaining play, has had one of either Barcelona or Real Madrid taking the title for the past five years.

The structure of La Liga is built to further push the rivalry. For the past two seasons fixtures have been allotted with a new system that sees teams facing the 'top pair' in close succession; in theory this will build the year up to a momentous climax, but in practice Barcelona collapsed in 2007/08 and Madrid were frankly too abject to put up a fight in the latter half of 2008/09. Madrid and Barcelona are also the only teams to have separate buyers for the rights to their league matches, and you're not likely to see anyone else making regular appearances on your Sky-equipped telly.

There is one, more simple reason that this year's title chase will be a straight duel, however: nobody else has the consistency to mount a serious challenge. The 'lower' teams in the league haven't invested over the summer, and have managed to shine dimly even when those above them have looked shakey. The expected 'best of the rest' have faired even worse, with Villareal and Atletico Madrid languishing in the relegation places -the latter suffering a drubbing at the hands of Barça in the azulgrana's first real test from the first five games. Valencia are a shambles, in case that wasn't obvious already.

Fret not though! Puyol and Alves themselves probably don't believe a word of it either, and there is plenty of fun to be had as the two rivals focus on each other. You get the feeling that it will be a draw rather than a loss that will prove to be the early point of separation between the top two, but AS, Marca and Sport will go barmy about it whilst we amuse ourselves with the hysteria and the entertaining contest for the 'pichichi'. Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored again just ten minutes after coming on as a sub last weekend -the best starting goal record in Barça history, and he should play against Malaga this coming round to add to his tally in almost inevitable fashion.

On second thoughts, maybe Puyol and Alves should be micro-focusing not on Madrid but on shoring up the back line for when goal difference really starts coming into play.