A home game against struggling Bilbao. I expect nothing short of a trouncing. They give up bedore coming to us when they are in form imagine when they are out of form

Same players out due to injury namely Coentrao, Khedira and Jese. Pepe is back and will start. James will start too according to Carlo and Isco will be on the bench.

I think the line up is pretty much given aka the 4-2-4 Carlo is trying to force onto us. Would love it if Illarra starts and Modric sits out but I won't hold my breath on that

A comfortable win and a goddamn clean sheet would be nice before the Int break.

Bilbao are all over the place right now, just lost to fcking Bate Borisov.

Tbf we found a way to lose to even bigger strugglers LaReal earlier this season

True.

And Varane is the one that gets benched... someone explain to me why Ramos is just guaranteed to start when he's playing much worse than both Pepe and Varane.

He like Iker can be however crap they can possibly manage but still walks into the starting line up. At least Bale and the like get subbed out when they truly suck but Ramos and Iker have nothing to worry about. Not only for us but the national team too, it's really worrying if you ask me

good win, bilbao are always a tricky side to play against, i was actually fearful this might be tougher than it is....good work from benzema with the goals

Our best performance this season. The transition from defense to attack was incredible. It was similar to 11-12 tbh.

This was our best game in years...
We were incredible today and I pull my hats off for the performance.
Everything clicked like clock-work..

For those who dint watch it, bilbao's keeper deserved a man of the match award for that performance; we could have scored 8-10 goals.
Our transition from defense to attack was such a joy to behold.
James marking was 10 times better. Infact, he pressured his opponents just as good as di maria.
Their passes were accurate and they always knew where their teammates were.
Bale clicked today but lost a lot of opportunities to score.
Our defending was perfect

I can boldly say that no team in the world can beat us if we played the way we played
Am over the moon with this performance

Great game from the front three. Modric played alot better too. Pepe-Varane>>> Pepe/Varane-Ramos

But boy oh boy Bilbao have regressed so bad it's unbelievable, time to let go of Valverde imo

We shouldn't get carried away by this win, we already knew Bilbao were playing crap even before the game. I hope Carlo doesn't think we can get something away from Barca with this line up. Illarra needs to start, we need one defensive midfielder out there

Did you watch the game, did you watch the aggression and speed with which the mdfielders tracked back.
This win wasn't down to bilbao being bad.
I have watched other madrid wins and am always critical of their performance even when we win.
We talked about defending as a 4-4-2 and attacking as a 4-3-3.
This was one perfect example.
Bale players better when he is starting from further back as opposed to staying in a wide attacking role.
I also noticed that he plays better when we don't dwell on the ball for too long.
It was a perfect game

This performance was very similar to the one against Deportivo, the only difference was that, that game was away while this at home. We were as aggressive then as now, in fact we always press high when we lose it but other teams have been able to bypass that with good inter play. Not saying this game was useless because of the state of the opposition but defensively we can't take much away against a team that has had difficulties scoring even at home where they should be strong

I can bet you anything Bale will go back to being crap next game, and teams will continue to create chances from our left side. If this is improved I'd like to see us win against the Valencias, Atletis and Barcas before declaring it a success. I did notice James play more diciplined though so hopefully he will continue doing that in the future and not drift up to play with the front three leaving us with only 2 midfielders

Perfect performance. Everyone looked very good and we even kept a clean sheet, great stuff.

Our offensive pressure is insane when we are ticking.

Madrid going into full overdrive. That performance was as good as they come. The team performed as a unit from cr7 to bale..that i'm actually beginning to have a double mind for the el clasico now. Btw, bale had better start looking for a way to stat-pad b4 jesse recovers fully.. Can start by laying ambush for those small teams. Could help his confidence.