Last season, Real Madrid faced possibly their toughest game at the Vicente Calderon in a long time. Aguero was firing on all cylinders, Reyes carrying the Rojiblancos, and they were making a serious case for themselves towards European competition. Even in the face of this, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was surprised to see Mourinho line up Lass, Xabi, and Khedira in midfield from the start.

For those of us who remember Fabio Capello's infamous double pivote formation of Emerson and Mamadou Diarra, you probably know what would happen if this gamble went wrong. El Mundo Deportivo would be doing 'exclusives' with 'friends of Cristiano', claiming that our winger doesn't like Real Madrid's style of play, the friendly rivalry between Kaka and Ozil would be morphed into a 'rift' between those 2 and Diarra, because now both our playmakers couldn't play, and some tabloid would fabricate white handkerchiefs in the stands, to signal that it's Mou's time to go.

At least, that's exactly what I was thinking, in addition to "Dear God, please don't make me #%$# my pants tonight"

I shouldn't have worried though, (or maybe my prayers were answered), because the changed formation hit Atleti in the face like a wall of ice. Instead of sitting back and absorbing the pressure like 3 DMs might usually do, the Madrid players pressed extremely high. Khedira playing almost as a right winger, and Lass on the left. With Atleti's marking going haywire, they had no idea how to cope, and by the time they figured it out, the game was long buried.

They say you can get lucky once, so Jose did it again yesterday to show us it really is him being a genius and not his luck. Khedira was playing in the hole behind Benzema, breaking up Valencia's attacks all over the pitch and being a complete nuisance. Lass played slightly deeper in midfield, and looked like he'd turned into a dribbling God. He must have taken some lessons with Cristiano. Xabi himself, slightly liberated from his water carrying duties was allowed to freely wield some of the class that's made him famous.

The now hallowed Trivote may not be the prettiest formation Jose's ever fielded, but you can't deny it's been ruthlessly effective everytime we've lined it up so far. The pace, the running, and frustrating Valencia really gave us the edge in the first half, and that was what counted. We got the goal, capitalized on their mistakes, and knew how to hold on.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is sometimes needed to win trophies.