Atletico Madrid vs Real Madrid

Hopefully Dani and Danilo are back after the break and stay healthy.

I think we played all right but the creativity of James was missing. Isco at RAM was useless. Our midfield was legit and Casemiro was fantastic.

Ramos returns and of course screws up. Let's not even get to Ronaldo. Typical ronaldo in a big game performance. When will casual fans realize the unsung players like Benz, Casemiro, Dani, Varane, Modric and Kroos are the true backbone of this team? I can only dream.

We had this game and thanks our "veterans" (ronaldo, ramos, arbeloa) We gave it away. We are still in good position in liga but we couldve rised to 1st

Not impressed with benitez.

Clearly lacks attacking coaching and the only way we create chances are random crosses. There is no understanding through the middle and no penetration in final third. Even in counters we never posed any threat. Attacking coaching is clearly lacking.

One of the best defensive performance I have ever seen from a Madrid player from casemiro and still have end in draw.. Can't express how many face palm I want to do.

Both teams were defending really well so neither were creating clear cut chances and quite frankly, last time we played them, we got walloped. Hard.

Before the equaliser, we both had one shot on target. It was either wide or high. Honestly, Rafa and Madrid contained them nicely. I can assume with a lot of surety that Dani, Danilo or Nacho there and we would be celebrating a win.

Adit wrote:Not impressed with benitez.

Clearly lacks attacking coaching and the only way we create chances are random crosses. There is no understanding through the middle and no penetration in final third. Even in counters we never posed any threat. Attacking coaching is clearly lacking.

One of the best defensive performance I have ever seen from a Madrid player from casemiro and still have end in draw.. Can't express how many face palm I want to do.

I wouldn't say that.

He only has 3 attackers right now (Ronaldo, Benzema, Isco). Jese, Bale, James have all been injured so far. Denis and Vazquez haven't earned time so he's not working with a lot.

He has this plan to play Bale central so we should just wait and see what he does when he has all his attackers ready.

The attackers do look isolated though.

mou,carlo and rafa it doesn't matter who the coach is or what their plans are, cr will break it eventually, and the attack will start to look disjointed and blame with be spread every where except the main culprit cr.

good or bad season cr will always get his goals .

We played amazingly well pre Bale & James injury. Hopefully we'll get back to that playstyle after both of em are back.

Also, it's October. I'm not gonna make any conclusions based of October.

We all saw what transpired last season.......

Give Benitez his time.

Pedram wrote:Last time i checked, you were below Real Madrid so please kindly fck off.

What's up with you guys telling people to "F off" huh?

Tsk tsk tsk...

Obvious trolls riling up Madrid fans after a draw.

Not surprised they're pissed at them.

three bloody draws, with barcelona slipping this team has to take advantage. we should be ashamed that we couldn't win the league when villanova was ill, ashamed that we couldn't win anything last season after their off-the-field controversies. if we bottle this with messi out, then i don't even know what to say about our mental state. arbeloa is terrible, i've always said it. the clown had two good seasons at madrid and that was it. he used the feud with iker to gain some sort of little fan support, when he hadn't even had one good game in years

kroos needs rest, he doesn't look convincing imo. his close passes are alright, but he hardly impressed me today. frankly he's hardly been consistent, especially when we are pressured.   isco had one of those games where u're like "nothing is going to come from this guy today". cristiano, yet another poor showing. rather than focus on scoring, your playing down the wings, at least try to make your teammates better. i didn't champion his equaling of raul's record cos that isn't a trophy, we want titles. the same way i haven't championed any of the pichichis he's gotten cos we've never won the league.

its a shame cos despite all the talk that he's getting older, i feel he can still do more than just showing up at the right time to score....we gave atleti too much respect after going one nil up. and i don't get why; we're better than them yet cos of a few poor results against them guys seem nervous and shaky. this should have been an easy 3 points

Jack Daniels wrote:What's up with you guys telling people to "F off" huh?

Tsk tsk tsk...

Post game frustration.

izzy wrote:

Jack Daniels wrote:What's up with you guys telling people to "F off" huh?

Tsk tsk tsk...

Post game frustration.

Not an excuse to start telling people to "F off".

Chad, you should write down all your criticisms of Ronaldo in a letter and just keep it to yourself.  

We get it, you hate Ronaldo it's just getting old mate.  As old as your love for Benzema.

But to address your point- Ronaldo is obviously not the only problem.  We played a very strong side that sat deep and did well to restrict almost every attacking threat through the middle.

We just aren't as good attacking from the wings, hasn't been that way for as long as I can remember. Hats off to Simone for his tactics.

Maybe Rafa should have recognized this earlier and subbed Isco off, who was useless today, and had Bale on the left, Ronaldo on the right.  Or put in Vasquez

Thats what I would have done.

I see Chad is blaming Ronaldo yet again. I mean, Arby literally gave the ball away and Ramos did a triple error in one move but Ronaldo gets the blame. Mind you, Cristiano with yet another subpar match but at this point like Dmad, it's getting to a point where it's annoying rhetoric.

Also, nothing wrong with people coming into our section. We could do with more traffic anyway. Where is Hala? I need his insight and optimism and to blame him for something...

He was shitty today Deez though.

He'll find his form, he always does. I just hope it comes when Rafa has all his attackers to choose from and in April and May specifically.

@vandeez yeah sure and in reality i could careless what you think, cr is and will always be the main problem, his all round game is lacking for years and its a big part of the reason why we don't win anything.

just as how all of you can jump on benzema and blame everything on him, especially when cr is playing worse, i can say what i want and when i want mainly when its the truth.

so end of the day the team can't have a proper attack, because ego can't score unless the team spends 90 mins passing to him .

arbeloa needs to be replaced by someone, anyone from castilla. i doubt any footballer can be worse than he is in that position. i'm not a fan of promoting youth just for the sake of it, but in this case, arbeloa is a disaster waiting to happen, or rather a disaster that has happened on several occasions. let the guy spend the rest of his contract on the bench or making up the numbers during training. he doesn't belong anywhere near that right back spot.

he was useful to the media when iker was around, and the spanish dailys where desperate to sell papers.....now he is of more use to barcelona than he is to us.....i'm not going off post game emotions, but i maintain arbeloa should never play for us again, not even for five minutes.....maybe not even during training, cos rafa might go off on false information that the attacker/winger up against arbeloa is actually good, not taking into account that arbeloa is extreme garbage

Why didn't Nacho play instead of Arbeloa? My obvious choice.

Doesn't matter anyway.

International break, most of our injured players SHOULD be back (you never know with James) so we move on.

Is Carvajal's injury serious?

LeVersacci wrote:Why didn't Nacho play instead of Arbeloa? My obvious choice.

cos he's a center back. he has played some games at wing back before, but the concern the coaching staff may have is his ability to go forward. however i'd take nacho in a heartbeat over arbeloa, hell i won't even mind kiko casilla playing right back over that traffic cone arbe. at least kiko has some physical presence

So Summary of all the comments and today's game is
- Keylor is super good and has been saving our asses.
- Ramos and arbeloa were two disasters not just waiting to happen, but already happened.
- Defence didnt get too much support from midfielders, in the second half especially the forwards and they dissected our defense at will.
- Kroos has been below average
- Casemiro was a beast today
-  Modric is a constant (k), ever consistent.
- Benzema almost always turns up in the big games.
- Isco was wasted on the right side.
- Ronaldo!! hmm! now to Ronaldo!!! - he never turns up in the big matches, his first touch is horrible, control and passes are bad, shot abysmal, ego inflated.
- I noticed Benzema and isco complaining when ronaldo made his selfish moves and Benzema was pissed off when he got subbed off because it was clear ronaldo was the attacker with a problem.
It seems Benzema and others are already tired of him now and are ready to come out of his shadow.
I cant wait for Bale and james to come back and steal the spotlight.

All in all, it was a fair match, with carvajal on and more intent in the second half, we could have won

As for Benitez
I will still grade him with a B for this match. Genuis to use casemiro but his downfall would be his obsessions with trying to please Ronaldo. For the 4th match now, i have seen him remove benzema and leave only Ronaldo in front. That is a clear message to Ronaldo that "you are important and because of that, we would build the team around you and remove any player that has the ability to compete with you for goals."

That decision is turning out to be a very horrible one because contrary to what we thought, Ronaldo's evolution to a striker would be a horrible horrible decision for the club. he prolly has the worst shot accuracy in world football with a bad first touch and control.
He has broken the goal-scoring record for madrid. I hope he leaves next season.

@shadexticos, james is out for like another month, so don't harp on waiting for him...i hope that guy isn't slowly turning into a man of glass, cos when u're signed for 80 million we can't have you spending two three months at the hospital, same goes for bale, who better not play that garbage football he played last season when he returns

@titosantill
We have the international break and i think it is good for us that he is injured cos if he played today, he would have been available for his country and he could pick up another injury.
he is our best player and he needs to find a way to stay off the treatment table.

As for Bale, he has been good so far this season and i am hoping he doesnt get an injury playin for Wales and continues from where he stopped.

We honestly need them, we need that shift from the ronaldo dependency since it only works against the espanyols and malmos of football.

its ridiculous that wales calls up bale. i know they're close to a euro spot, but to fly a guy who's just been injured for national camp and then play him, is very selfish...considering we are footing all the medical bills, not to talk of wages