With Atleti up this weekend and Bayern on the horizon it would be easy for our team to overlook tomorrow’s match against lowly Alaves. If we look back to the third week of league play, it was Alaves who took out Barcelona, 2-1 and they currently sit in the eleventh spot at 40 points.
Real Madrid continues to scrape through matches. Sunday’s 3-0 scoreline didn’t reflect the difficulty of the match as the last 2 goals came at the very end. I did enjoy seeing Nacho get on the board with his late goal, as I visited his youth football academy this past week to take photos and video clips.
Every match we’re living dangerously but I continue to believe that we’ll take the league in this poor state of affairs.
Alaves sports a solid defense only losing by ‘goleada’ this year to 2 teams. Marcos Llorente is currently ranked 4th in ball recoveries as compared to his counterpart, the highly rated Casemiro, who is only ranked 62 in this area.
Zidane is likely to not risk Varane, pairing up Ramos and Pepe in front of goal. Pepe is still a strong defender and I would like to see him continue at the Bernabeu a couple more years. Carvajal is likely to be rested in favor of our underachieving Danilo.
In regards to all the speculation on acquiring Atelti’s Theo Hernandez, Zizou limited his response to stating that Theo is a good player but he can’t give opinions on players that aren’t on his team.
In response to questions about Modric’s form Zizou replied: “Maybe he lost a few balls in the last match, but we can’t say he is playing poorly. You can’t always play great. I’m happy with what he delivers on the pitch.”
I am hoping to see an improvement in attacking prowess it tomorrow’s match. Benzema has been good over the past 2 matches. Cristiano, Bale and even Modric need to pick up their game if we have any shot of returning to the Champion’s League final. These type of Liga matches are key to recovering form. This match is not sexy. Its one of the most complicated matches for Real Madrid simply because the players don’t come out terribly motivated.
My prediction, 2-1 for Madrid with goals from Cristiano, Benzema and Deyverson for Alaves.