Our defence has finally sharpened up while it's going in the other direction for Atleti. They got outplayed by Barca who are not playing that well, lost to Villarreal, barely scraped past Las Palmas at home and just lost a game at home vs Benfica. A game they should be winning. We had a practice game of what we could be facing against Malmö and I'd say we did really well to unlock them. We probably would have scored against Malaga had we subbed in Lucas/Denis we needed that width and their direct approach

Anyhow most of our injured players should be back but I hope they don't get to play from start as they've had no match practice. Continue with Kovacic imo and I think we will as he was subbed out vs Malmo. He wouldn't have if he wasn't playing. Ramos should probably come in for Nacho for his experience and our attackers are going to need to do alot better than their previous showings against this opposition

Injured players expected to come back

Bale
James
Ramos

Still injured

Pepe
Danilo

Predicted line up:

Not so sure about Ramos and Bale. James has been confirmed ready but I haven't seen anything yet that the other two are ready. As for Kovacic, I think he was taken out because he was having an off game. Not as bad as some have posted but not good either. Marcelo is definitely playing, he was held out of Malmo game to rest him for this Atleti game. I'm expecting James to start given the report on him this morning.

But we have to be weary of Atleti in their stadium, despite their reason form. This is the first real test of the season.

Ramos and Bale have already started training with the squad, James should be ready soon. Danilo and Pepe are still out though. Pepe should be back after the derby but I am not sure aboit Danilo

Man, we could really do with Gareth "better than Di Maria" Bale and James "also better than Di Maria" Rodriguez for this match. Just not confident at all to be honest.

N.B both sentences are not linked. Pretty sure I'll still be not confident if we had a full squad to pick from.

Let's see if CR shows up against a better opponent for once....

sportsczy wrote:Let's see if CR shows up against a better opponent for once....

He will score but he won't do anything else.

I'll take a goal... lately, he's not even providing that against the better sides. And it can't be a PK. I want to see a legit goal.

PK's are legit goals Sport. Don't be that guy pls. You're too mature for that.

sportsczy wrote:I'll take a goal... lately, he's not even providing that against the better sides. And it can't be a PK. I want to see a legit goal.

What better sides have you faced though? Madrid haven't faced any of the heavy hitters yet.

Expecting from Ronaldo a performance similar to the 11/12 one against Atletico. He was utterly dominant that night.

Doc wrote:PK's are legit goals Sport. Don't be that guy pls. You're too mature for that.

They're legit no doubt. But they don't indicate anything about a players performance... It's an isolated event that has a 90% plus success rate in top leagues.

What?

So last year in the CL against Atleti never happened? Could of sworn he showed up against them there............

sportsczy wrote:

Doc wrote:PK's are legit goals Sport. Don't be that guy pls. You're too mature for that.

They're legit no doubt. But they don't indicate anything about a players performance... It's an isolated event that has a 90% plus success rate in top leagues.

I hear yuh and thanks for actually explaining further. Quite frankly, I would take a 40 yard own goal 1-0 win against a team we seem to have genuine issues with.

@Izzy
I didn't forget about UCL 1/4s but I like to keep the UCL and La Liga separate in my mind and we suck against them in La Liga to be frank.

With Carlo, we never ever adjusted tactics.  They built a brick wall against what we were doing and we kept pounding our heads against it.  Hope rafa adjusts... Strange too because Carlo is usually very tactical.

What!!!! Sports making a negative comment against Carlo and this after falling off the Benz bandwagon. Has someone highjacked the nickname?

On a more serious note, I am very interested in this match for a number of factors

- Atleti is in very poor form (for them) and yet we all are worried because they have had our number very convincingly the last couple of seasons especally in Calderon

- we on the other hand are in fairly good form despite the injuries. We haven't been scoring a lot, but we are getting lots of chances.

- we are getting some of the injured back for this game

- At the same time, Jibers comment that we have yet to play a good team is legit, this will be first real test of the season

- we don't really know how Benitez will do. iT seems most of you previously felt, no way was he up to the job, but it sure looks to me that he has done everything right so far, especially improving on Carlo's weaknesses (rotation, squad use, better balance, better team defense), but again we haven't had a real test yet.

So here's hoping for a solid victory. Hala Madrid

I still maintain that we are not creating enough clear cut chances. Malaga showed and then Malmo repeated that having a deep line is the best against Real Madrid since they dont create enough chances through center and depends on crosses to make chances. We really needs to show to those teams that sitting deep just wont work against us, if not many other teams will come to play us with similar pattern.

sportsczy wrote:Let's see if CR shows up against a better opponent for once....

i second dat

sportsczy wrote:I'll take a goal... lately, he's not even providing that against the better sides. And it can't be a PK. I want to see a legit goal.

We'd forgive him for this game if its a penalty he ends up scoring, i would take any type of goal. gone are the days when i wished our opponents were in perfect shape.
Koke would likely miss dat game, hopefully torres too.
They are going thru a bad patch and dats good for us.
i dont care if they end up using their third team. the one who owns the true bragging rights is the one lifting the trophy.
History doesnt care about the opponents or the manner in which u won ur trophy.

sportsczy wrote:With Carlo, we never ever adjusted tactics.  They built a brick wall against what we were doing and we kept pounding our heads against it.  Hope rafa adjusts... Strange too because Carlo is usually very tactical.

It was painful watching us play against atletico with the same tactics over and over again.
The few games i have seen show that Benitez actually considers the opponent before setting up the tactics and also makes the right substitutions and tweaks to tackle the tactical issues that arise during the match.

Adit wrote:I still maintain that we are not creating enough clear cut chances. Malaga showed and then Malmo repeated that having a deep line is the best against Real Madrid since they dont create enough chances through center and depends on crosses to make chances. We really needs to show to those teams that sitting deep just wont work against us, if not many other teams will come to play us with similar pattern.

We spend too much time stringing slow irrelevant passes together in the midfield, we have lost some of the directness to our game. The only time we play purposeful passes and when we need a goal which is annoying but i believe james and bale will restore that.
another solution would be to move modric closer to the box 18 cos against malaga, i noticed we started creating clearer chances when he moved further up.

As a number 1 isco fan, i cant believe i am saying this but isco is partly to blame for our slow game. Kovacic even looks like a better player than him. i wud say isco has been elegantly average

so James has just had a relapse of his injury............

halamadrid2 wrote:so James has just had a relapse of his injury............

Crap... Any details?

No details anywhere but this is what Rafa said in his presser

He got a knock on Thursday and won't be fit. The Colombia team doctor and coach are in Madrid. He won't be available on Sunday and almost definitely won't be able to play for his country either".

So that's at least another 2 weeks

Alone in 1st place is up for grabs!

So essentially, James would be back after the international break and safe from any unnecessary injuries while on international duties.

Keylor; Carvajal, Varane, Ramos, Marcelo; Casemiro, Kroos; Isco, Modric, Cristiano y Benzema.

Think it makes sense to have Casemiro start over Kova due to his physicality. But he'll be a red card waiting to happen with the way he hack at players

At least we don't need to worry about Atleti winning headers with Casemiro, Varane and Ramos there