The plane came down and went up again, then came down and went up again. Twice it tried to land and twice it failed, so it climbed back through the wind and the rain and turned south, inland away from the Atlantic. Somewhere on board, a Glaswegian looked out of the window and wondered: “Does this happen every week in Spain?” Eventually, they touched down in Santiago de Compostela, St James’s shrine, where pilgrims carry scallop shells and where a bus waited to take him and his fellow passengers north again, back to La Coruña. By the time they reached their hotel, 70km and 70 minutes away, it was five and a-half hours to kick off. The hotel’s name? Finisterre: the End of the Earth.

Outside, a few people waited in the rain, rivers rising in the streets. There was time for a couple of hours’ sleep and when they came out again there were more people waiting, cameras ready. Another bus ride, shorter this time, and now the photographers were everywhere. When he stepped out at Riazor for the first time, just before 10pm, they surrounded him. Twelve days after he was announced as the new manager of Real Sociedad, 216 days after he last took charge of a game, David Moyes was back on the bench. “I’ve probably managed 600 matches, or maybe a few more, but this was different. This was a special one,” he said.

Shunted from Cuatro TV to Energy, where there was no pre-match buildup, no post-match analysis and nothing but adverts at half-time – a decision that favoured Madagascar 3 and the league’s long-term plan to kill off the free-to-air game – it wasn’t a particularly special game. 556,000 watched it, 3.2% of Spain’s TV audience, and the other 96.8% did not miss that much. For la Real, an impressive first half gave way to a disappointing second and afterwards there was an apology: “Sorry for dragging you out for a 0-0,” Moyes smiled. Asked if he was happy with a point, he replied: “No.”

But there were things to be happy about and Moyes had enjoyed the experience, flight apart. Others too were satisfied, for now at least. Sure, la Real are only outside the relegation zone on goal difference, but few doubt they will climb away from there. “They get better with Moyes, but they don’t win,” ran the headline in El Mundo Deportivo. El Diario Vasco called it a “point of departure”. For the first time this season, la Real had kept a clean sheet; they’d “changed their face”, the paper declared. This was “a notable improvement”, a “declaration of intent”.

Mostly, there had been declarations of intensity. “The intensity we are seeing now was not there before,” Iñigo Martinez had said in the buildup to the game. “Moyes is insisting on intensity,” Chori Castro said. “Moyes asks us to be intense and put our foot in,” Markel Bergara said. After the passivity of Jagoba Arrasate, that was what they had craved; it was what Moyes had asked of them and what they had asked of Moyes. “The president wanted me [to remedy] that lack of intensity and drive,” he said. “I think that’s what people want.”

So, Spanish players are not so different to English ones? “Strangely not,” Moyes replied. “You come here and think it’s going to be the tiki-taka style [but] I have found they are very keen to have high-intensity in their game and they want to play at a good tempo and I think they probably want that because of what a lot of people see from the Premier League.

“They have got some incredibly talented footballers who have played for big clubs. We have got to improve the intensity we play at. I think the playing style is good: we try to pass the ball, we tried to tonight. But I don’t think they are fixed on tiki-taka. They would not have a problem hitting a long pass.”

“I really enjoyed the experience,” Moyes said. He is la Real’s fourth British coach, after Chris Coleman, John Toshack and Harry Lowe (who even played for them at the age of 48), and there had been something quite British about the experience too, right down to a touchline confrontation and a red card.

One break ended with Carlos Vela shooting just over and had started with Moyes stepping on to the pitch to pass the ball back to one his players to take a quick free-kick. Deportivo’s fitness coach Roberto Cabellud went mad, heading to the la Real bench, jabbing his finger. Moyes just stood, looked the other way and with a gentle dismissiveness gestured for Cabellud to calm down. Which only drove him madder. “I don’t know what happened. I was on my bench, he was on his, but he seemed to be angry about something,” Moyes said.

“It felt like someone was going to say I was out here causing trouble straightaway. I said to my boy at the side that I can see myself getting sent off: the rain, the game itself, a few tackles flying in,” he smiled.

As Moyes talked about Real Sociedad, it was noticeable that he slipped between “they” and “we”. This is his team but it is not really his team yet. It is too early still. There were changes made for his first game but most of them had been forced on him by injury and illness. He admitted he had worked the side hard on Monday and Tuesday but had then “come right off them” after that. He is still watching, learning and adapting, making his mind up about which way to head. Things will change: there are decisions to make about the training ground and the players, and even the usual travel routine.

Moyes is still analysing his surroundings and insists that if la Real will have to adapt to him, he will have to adapt to them too. There are decisions to be made about his staff too. Moyes came alone. He has not brought anyone with him, although he will. One of the reasons was he did not want to arrive heavy-handed and risk building barriers. This weekend he asked Asier Santana, the youth team coach who took temporary charge against Atlético Madrid, to join the team. His backroom staff consists of Imanol Alguacil, Erik Bretos, Karla Larburu, Roberto Navajas and Juan Carlos Samaniego. All were already at the club.

During Moyes’s presentation there was a moment early on when he called his team just “Sociedad”. You could see him almost squirm at his mistake. After that, he referred to them seven or eight times and every time, correctly, as “la Real.” He wants to live in the centre, not in some isolated estate, and embrace San Sebastián, possibly Spain’s most beautiful city. He says he does not only expect his footballing style to evolve, he wants it to. He has not yet learnt Spanish. Lessons start today.

“It’s not easy because part of my style is how I speak and put my message over,” he admitted during the press conference after the game, turning to the 25-year-old next to him. “I have a very good translator; this young man is doing a great job: he speaks good English and he speaks good football. And we all know a very good manager who was once a very good translator.” Alongside him, Erik Bretos blushed slightly. This time he did not translate word for word. “‘I have a translator’,” he said.

“There are three or four players who speak pretty good English, like [Carlos] Vela and [Esteban] Granero and that helps when the translator is not on the spot,” Moyes explained later. “The players have been great and a lot of them are actually taking English lessons, so have the staff, so there is something a wee bit weird about that … it should almost be the other way round.” It should, but for now it helps. Down on the touchline, clutching a scrap of paper and a pen taken from his hotel, he had shouted his way through the game in English. “Play! Play! Play!” “Go, Chory! Go!”. “Come on, Stefano!” La Real don’t have a player called Stefano.

“I actually felt pretty much at home. It was quite comfortable, although obviously the communication on to the field is not easy. The players are not even understanding how I’m shouting their names. It’s a broad Scottish accent – well, I hope it’s still broad – trying to shout their names and [with] me still trying to get to know them as well. That was all new. They don’t really know what I am saying when I’m out there screaming at them and maybe that’s just as well. But this was the first of many experiences and I enjoyed it.”

Outside, the bus was waiting, although a boat might have been better. The rain poured down still. It was almost 1am, another reminder that if this was an oddly British experience, it was a Spanish one too. The little differences. “It’s been a long day,” Moyes smiled as he headed out the door at the end of his first game as a manager in Spain. “Normally you’d be in bed at this time. You’d probably have watched Match of the Day and gone to bed.”

Talking points and results

• Carmen Martínez Ayudo is 85, she’s a widow, and she lives in a small flat on Calle Sierra de Palomeras in the working-class neighbourhood of Vallecas, to the east of Madrid, just as she has done for the last 50 years. Or at least she did until this weekend, when the bailiffs came to evict her. A €40,000 loan her son had secured on her home with a lender had increased to €70,000 and he had defaulted. The man who had given her the loan would not listen to laments or accept a rent from social security. So Carmen was out on the street. But then a group of men came to her rescue.

The men are footballers and the play for Rayo Vallecano. Their coach, Paco Jémez, announced on Saturday morning that he and the squad will find Carmen somewhere to live and pay her rent. They will also be setting up a fund to help other people in similar positions. It will cost them more than their club has paid for players this season. “We couldn’t just stand there; we will help her so that she can live somewhere with dignity and not feel alone,” Jémez said.

The following morning Rayo, a club whose fans have long had a left-wing identity tied to the neighbourhood, faced Celta. Banners were hung all round the three-sided ground. “Carmen Stays”, said one. “The pride of a neighbourhood”, said another. At the end, a huge banner declared: “The evictions of a sick state/the solidarity of a working-class neighbourhood.” Rayo won 1-0 but Jémez was not that impressed. “There’s something more than just winning,” he said.

Neymar pays homages to Lionel Messi Photograph: David Ramos/Getty Images

• Leo Messi is the Spanish league’s all time top scorer, at 27. He overtook Telmo Zarra this weekend, breaking a record that has stood for 59 years. Zarra’s record stood at 251; against Sevilla, Messi equalled, broke and then pulled away from that record with a brilliant hat-trick. The first was a wonderful free-kick, for the second he slid in to finish a few yards out and the third was classic Messi, coming in from the right, dropping the ball off to a team-mate (Neymar this time), who stops it for him to curl it low into the corner.

• The timing was good too, coming at the end of week in which Messi told Olé: “It is true I always said I wanted to stay here forever but things do not always go as you want.” If the comment did not matter much, the context mattered, and the repercussions were gigantic, particularly for a board under pressure. Messi and his team-mates stood and watched a congratulations video on the giant scoreboard at Camp Nou. When the president Josep Maria Bartomeu and sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta appeared, they were whistled by the fans. Messi’s name, of course, was chanted.

Messi’s 253 goals came in 289 games: it all started against Albacete in May 2006. Of the 253, 206 were scored with his left foot, 38 with his right, eight with his head and one with his hand. 32 of them were penalties, 35 outside the area and 218 inside it, 142 at home and 111 away. “He’s the best player I have ever seen,” Luis Enrique said.

• There are assists and then there is what Aduriz did to set up Athletic Bilbao’s second goal this weekend. Superb.

• Corner. Header. Goal. There was something familiar about Atlético’s first as they beat Malaga 3-1 on Saturday.

• Is that Levante way up in 13th? It is, you know. They’ve now picked up seven of the last 12 points, including another derby win over Valencia, thanks to a beauty from Morales.

• The weekend’s best game might just have been Elche v Córdoba. Elche missed a penalty to take the lead so it was Córdoba who went 2-0 up and seemed on course for a first win of the season. The first was scored by Fidel, who is on loan … from Elche. And the second was a belter from Fede Cartabia. But Lombán (who hadn’t taken the missed penalty) scored a second penalty and Jonathans (who had) got the goals that saw it finish 2-2.

• A judge cleared Pedro Leon to play for Getafe this weekend. Just a pity the league did not get round to sorting out his paperwork in time, eh.

• On the weekend when everyone noticed that there’s a team called Eibar and they’re in the first division, Cristiano Ronaldo went to their ground and scored again. Emilio Butragueño is a Real Madrid legend who was the league’s top scorer in 1990-91, with 19 goals. Cristiano Ronaldo has now got 20 … after 12 games (11 of which he has played in.) Only three teams have scored more goals than him this season. Speaking of teams, Eibar were his 52nd opponents; he has scored against 51 of them. Only Dynamo have resisted.

• Muñquera negra. Again.

Results: Athletic 3-1 Espanyol, Atlético 3-1 Málaga, Eibar 0-4 Real Madrid, Barcelona 5-1 Sevilla, Deportivo 0-0 Real Sociedad, Rayo 1-0 Celta, Levante 2-1 Valencia, Elche 2-2 Córdoba, Villarreal 2-1 Getafe, Granada-Almería, tonight.