Why is Alonso always a starter against Barca?

Im gonna bust your balls on it, but it seems to me that we usually play a very 'collective' game, no?

St_Nick09_of_Goal wrote:Im gonna bust your balls on it, but it seems to me that we usually play a very 'collective' game, no?

Still not enough. we see sometimes that Ronaldo has a passing option but trying to shoot it himself or like first Classico that Khedira had a free player to pass but gifted the ball to Valdes easily.

Ronaldo is i think the only one who has something else in mind than passing first. Di Maria as well, but the rest always look for the passing option. I think Khedira's incident is isolated, he always passes the ball.

To me it's a matter on working on our build up game, working on retaining possession, and pacing the ourselves at a slower tempo and getting to move the ball around to beat the lines and beat pressure. PLaying a more advanced form of passing and possession football, more advanced than we play now.

That's what i think we lack. we already are playing well collectively, but we need to work on holding the ball more, one touch passing. Things that made barcelona successful, because that's how we will beat them more consistently. Im not saying let's copy them, because Villarreal and Valencia dont do it, but they pass the ball diligently.

Countering is good, but if we play 10 times, and counter 10 times, we win one or two games.

deezydeez wrote:i am disappointed by some of these posts..

first of all, sahins arrival does NOT mean that he will magically do better against barcelona than alonso.

alonso has been one of our best and most consistent players this year, he has more than earned the right to play in the most important matches.

ronaldo has barely scored or been effective against barca up until the cdr final. are we calling for his head next? no. people calm down.

thing is sahin can easily be benched if he doesnt perform, unlike alonso or ronaldo

alonso has been very good indeed but so has ronaldo, yet both of them never perform vs farca

why??? you might ask

because alonso when put on pressure cant clear the ball like ozil can and usually just hoofs it up or doesnt have it at all, if you look at the stats, alonso's worst percentage passing is always against barca, he doesnt even make many passes to start with and of them he only completes like a half dozen

itd make dimaria blush for example

a midfield of lass-pepe-sahin would do wonders vs farca, firstly they are all very fast, (unlike khedira and alonso) and they are all very good short passers and they can all(not sure with sahin), win posession easily with their aggressive play

does anyone watch espanyol vs farca

one reason why espanyol always do good vs farca is because their midfield play very very agressive, not to mention if they lose the ball, they all swarm like flies, our team cant do that mainly because we have some very slow players and all our forwards bar higgy hardly if ever tracks back

so it automatically becomes a mission impossible for us

I am so confused by the thinking of some of the Madrid fans on this forum.

On no other Real Madrid forum do you have Madrid fans like this......

Sigh....

which is why our section is the most active one, compared to other forums

if one doesnt like what we discuss here, then they should kindly stay away, which is what i do anyways

you do know that you have been posting the same thing in most of the threads you have been posting in

we(well i do) get it, no need for the overspamming of the same thing written differently, but gets the same message across

it wont change anything

here are we discussing why we dont think alonso has been good vs farca and there are stats to back that up as well, yet you get confused by our thinking... i suggest you watch the games again maybe that will clear it up(hopefully)

*SIGH*

Why is Alonso always a starter against Barca? Because he has been our best midfielder for couple last seasons and we don't currently have better midfielder than him. It would be almost same to ask, why Casillas always plays against Barca.

In future? I don't know if will he be a starter but I certainly hope so since he is one of the leaders and among the best players in our squad. I would rather keep him on the field than Khedira since he is much better passer and more creative. Something like this:

Jack Daniels wrote:I'm watching..

i shat myself

At OP what makes you think Sahin, Khedira and Lass/Pepe will give you more possesion? Your forgetting that Alonso wins the ball back more than Sahin and defends better.

halamadrid2 wrote:
thing is sahin can easily be benched if he doesnt perform, unlike alonso or ronaldo

alonso has been very good indeed but so has ronaldo, yet both of them never perform vs farca

why??? you might ask

because alonso when put on pressure cant clear the ball like ozil can and usually just hoofs it up or doesnt have it at all, if you look at the stats, alonso's worst percentage passing is always against barca, he doesnt even make many passes to start with and of them he only completes like a half dozen

itd make dimaria blush for example

a midfield of lass-pepe-sahin would do wonders vs farca, firstly they are all very fast, (unlike khedira and alonso) and they are all very good short passers and they can all(not sure with sahin), win posession easily with their aggressive play

does anyone watch espanyol vs farca

one reason why espanyol always do good vs farca is because their midfield play very very agressive, not to mention if they lose the ball, they all swarm like flies, our team cant do that mainly because we have some very slow players and all our forwards bar higgy hardly if ever tracks back

so it automatically becomes a mission impossible for us

yeah i can't deny that xabi is not really himself when put on pressure, which's why when xabi subbed out in clasico la liga home we weren't looked like missing him, we played even better even though we're down to 10 man
he, however, as well as the rest of the team, looked pretty good in first half final CDR though, so perhaps the way we played also have thing to do with xabi's effectiveness, why we couldn't or tried to play like the first half final CDR ever again in the rest of clasicos still perplexed me :?:

to say replacing xabi with sahin could do us wonder.... :?: .....i can't wait to see sahin perform for us to get a better idea of that

i disagree about khedira thing though, he certainly is one of the better performers againts barca
in the last 2 clasico games he played (la liga home & final CDR), he effectively helped the offense, helped gaining possesion, moved the ball forward, linked up well supporting our attackers, the thing that lass often failed to do and which's why we missed him so much in the rest of clasicos, imo
except failed to finish a fine chance we got in the last minutes of clasico la liga home that could have won us the game, i can't think of anything to complain about khedira wrt clasicos

@ earlyprototype

he means against farca

a team alonso loses the ball horribly much against

It doesnt really matter if Alonso plays well against mediocre La Liga teams, it doesn't mean he's going to do it against Barca.

mtfootball wrote:It doesnt really matter if Alonso plays well against mediocre La Liga teams, it doesn't mean he's going to do it against Barca.

Exactly, my point. Against Farca , we need any advantage we could gain. Apart from Messi, we've got the better forward trio compared to them. All comes to midfield, if we manage to get at least 35% possession there, they'll fail to beat us because we create a lot more chances than them