Against Man Utd, up until the red card, we barely created chances. Man Utd were easily defending against our possession play and creating chances from counters and set pieces. After the red, we managed to get though and score 2 goals, mainly due to Modric coming on.

Even when we were winning, our defending was poor. Lopez saved us several times.

So how can improve? Maybe we need to start learning from teams like Man Utd, Bayern and Juventus on how to defend and stop the opposition creating chances.

Maybe we need to stop playing possession, when we can't play it as effectively as other sides. We're at our best when counter-attacking.

What do you think?

Manu let u play possession football, and you gladly approved. Stat wise Madrid came across as a tame Barcelona side, and that is not exactly how Madrid wants to play, no? Should have let Manu press higher by dropping deeper, at least for periods.

^^ No. Because United would not dared venture up and attack us. Did you not watch the game?


Our problem lied in dealing with the parked bus. Our players had a hard time creating space and considering we were extremely poor at set pieces both FK and corners.

Ozil wasn't the engine he was supposed to be and up til the red card/Modric sub that was when we noticed an increase in our performance.

halamadrid2 wrote:1- have a forward who is always in the box
2- play with out and out wingers who know how to beat a player and cross(at least one)
3- sell arbeloa to granada
4- not become drawn in when a defender is out of position
5- stop hoofing (lopez) because nobody gets the second ball

looks like all our problems

This.
no. 3 is important if we have to play a possession game, because he was like a 4-year old girl on the ball last night, it was horrid

After y'days match I am a bit worried.

Our team is built to beat teams on counter, but we seem to have no clue when teams defend. Someone on goal.com rightly said

How to beat Madrid?
1. Pressurize Alonso
2. Defend with numbers and close the spaces
3. give them the ball.
4. score through set pieces- or through Ramos .

Looks like exactly the script, if you see RM loses in La Liga and almost y'day. Mou has partially solved the problem by putting Khedira as RB and Modric in midfield. But it was against 10 men, we need to figure out how we play rest of our MF.

Modrics perf tonight and kaka's goal against Deportiva made me think we need to use both these players to pick spaces, instead of Khedira /Di Maria in such games.. Marcelo if fit, should be in too.

-----------------Lopez

-------- Khedira Ramos Varane Marcelo

----------- Alonso Modric

-------- Kaka Ozil Ronaldo

--------------Higuain/Benz

when a team is so disciplined in defense the only think you can do is be patient and probe the defense with tact.

i think madrid rushed possession at times, particularly with ronaldo on the ball. united expected time and again that ronaldo would be the central focus so they covered him well. madrid have far more weapons than that, i think players like ozil, higuain, and di maria should have been more involved and maybe the first 2 should have taken more risks instead of letting ronaldo take the risks.

We could follow Manu's tactics and just sit deep and counter, but is that something anybody would want to see?

In this Manu match, I think the biggest problem was that when we got into their area none had enough courage to try to dribble in tight spaces. They were just kicking the ball around Manu defense and then tried to either cross or through pass. This made it too easy for them, specially since they are quite good in air and had 8 players inside the box.

Modric's goal came from the situation where he challenged their player and got past of him in the good shooting position. Marcelo could be a good weapon in future rounds since he likes to that often and it causes panic in opposition defense. But that means we should get him in the shape asap.

But next time, we should clearly try to think are we going to dominate possession or counter and select player based on tactics. Higuain, Ronaldo, Coentrao, Arbeloa, Khedira, Callejon are really not players we should use against park the bus teams (although Ronaldo will play obviously).

Counter team:

Possession team:

sit deep and counter = get murdered by media in spain

gl with that, i want us to do that aswell, but it's almost a crime in spain to do so

When we play park the bus sides our best hope of scoring are freekicks and corners. We really need some sort of plan for these types of matches. Juve and Bayern defend much better than United. Good thing about Bayern though, is that they won't sit back however Juve will and if we do face them we'll face another frustrating two legs.