Zidane Sack Watch

I don't think there's anything wrong with changing your opinion. Circumstances, situations, contexts, they all change.

If one day someone says Sturaro is the future of midfielders but then sees him play or argue with 12 year old fans and quickly recants, I'd say that is a great sign of maturity.

But it has to be done with reflection, like, "I know I said Sturaro was going to be the future of the sport, but he's about as useless as @Unique in a World Religion class". Initially, you also can't post with elitism but rather humility, "I may be wrong, but in my opinion, Sturaro looks like the second coming of Tardelli", instead of "You guys clearly don't watch soccer, Benzema is the best forward since Van Basten. It's the other ten players, manager, assistant managers, bench players, reserve players, youth players and his ex girlfriend that are stealing his shine. You uncultured swine, Benzema would be a 100 goal per season striker if he actually got any service from those ball hogs".

Cavani changed himself for the betterment of the team after some run ins early on...  he was getting in the way of movements because he wanted to make sure he wasn't becoming a commodity.  Understandable because his willingness to sacrifice cost him dearly when he first joined PSG with Ibra  there.  

I didn't expect him to have the intelligence to figure his role out given the Ibra experience especially... I thought that poisoned him.  But to his credit, he saw that he was, in fact, getting in the way of action.  He started to make his movements off of Mbappe and Neymar as opposed to make his move and then ask those two to adapt to him.  It was a massive change.  Emery also (for once) had the good instinct to change to a 4231 in order to structure the attack a lot more... not to mention Draxler and Lo Celso both deserve to play.

I'm sorry that football is an evolutionary thing and I don't stubbornly stick to opinions despite changing circumstances.  I should be more stupidly stubborn I guess. My bad lol.

When is the last time Madrid was this far behind Bacelona in La Liga?

I can't find anything except that it is Madrid's lowest point tally at this stage of the season since at least 08/09.

maybe when they were like 4th 10 years ago or so behind villarreal etc

I honestly can't remember the last time we were fourth in the league and 16 points behind Barcelona.

This is also our lowest scoring-season in twenty years. But don't worry, we don't need anybody to come in. We are perfect the way we are and we don't need to make any signings. Life is good.

Checked out that season they came 4th, 15 years ago, they had 7 points more at this stage than they do now.

2-4 has the same weight now though, all automatic CL qualification

Zidane is definitely going to fall on the sword sooner rather than later. Not because its completely his fault, though he's not blameless, but because we know how this story goes

I think were just witnessing the tail end of a very successful cycle

I mean, 2 UCL titles in a row, a La Liga crown and 2 CWC titles in what, 1 and a half seasons of club football. Not bad. That being said, whatever Zidane is doing has run its course in a huge way and I reckon his tenure is all but done.

Even if we luck out in the UCL, his time at Madrid is quite over.

So what are the chances he legitimately gets sacked?

very low, i think he will announce he will announce he is leaving by himself.

If results get worse (getting KO'd by PSG wouldn't be considered worse) like dropping below the top 4, to which, was never a thought in my mind till now, yeah, he can actually get fired.

But if things remain as they are and maybe by some madness, our players remember that they are great footballers and play as such, he'll see out the season and maybe resign on his own.

Mind you, if he wins the CL, he ain't going and DoC is gonna vomit on his keyboard...after celebrating.

The stars are aligning for a third consecutive CL win

Hapless_Hans wrote:The stars are aligning for a third consecutive CL win

Wouldn't lie, I too having that feeling but it's just a feeling. The reality is that we really are not playing well in any capacity and are there for the taking.

I think Pepe was a massive loss.

Main reason for your troubles of course is the total performance collapse of Ronaldo and Benzema, but with those I wouldn't put it past them to suddenly show up in a CL latter stage knockout game.

I reiterate what I said in the corresponding Real section thread.
Your squad needs investment, and I find it bizarre to blame the lack of investment and the demise of Ronaldo etc on Zidane.
He extracted the maximum out of them last season, now give him an improved squad before damning him IMO.
One should assume he bought himself enough goodwill for that with his immense, unprecedented successes in his first two years.

Again you aren’t accepting that the lack of signing is due to Zidane, if not 100%, then at least 50%. He is responsible and will be held accountable.

which is patently a false statement.... since he's playing our summer signings exactly NEVER almost. If he was in charge of signings, you would think he would play the guys he signed lol.

It's not that logically complicated.

But carry on.

For the last time, he didn't bring Messi and Neymar in the summer. He brought youngsters for depth and to take over when the seniors step aside.

It's not really that hard to comprehend, really. You can't possibly expect him to pick Llorente ahead of Case, or Ceballos ahead of Modric, can you? Especially when he's 16 points behind Barcelona and is desperately trying to bounce back from the atrocious form he's in.

Besides, if you keep on saying that you don't want anyone to be signed every single time the journalists ask you about it, people will hold you responsible for the lack of signings regardless of whether or not you have a different opinion behind the curtains.

And please don't try to convince me that he asked the board for a CF in the summer and they turned him down. He chose to stick with Benzema and back him up with Mayoral. That's him. That's all him.

As if he had any problems playing unknown young quantities who had little to no experience last season (with success I might add and regularly).

Asensio, Lucas Vasquez and Casemiro...

That's because he was winning back then, so he could give them playing time regularly. Now, he's losing and laying in shambles. He can't afford to give them the nod now or else he would lose the support of the seniors and get skinned alive by the Spanish press.

He's playing them in the CDR games and subbing them in when he's team is winning 3-0 or 4-0. But given the fact that we have been struggling really bad this season to finish off games (can't even remember the last time we won 3-0 or even 2-0), he can't afford to sub Llorente in when we're 1-0 up in the 90 min.

Hapless_Hans wrote:I think Pepe was a massive loss

I do as well but the club really didn't wanna keep Pepe. Thought he had at least 1 more WC season in him since this was a WC year and he probably would been playing at a high level.

Yeah, players who Zidane really had support in let him down massively. Benzema is rubbish and Ronaldo has become useless. Bale is too injury prone and he actually has more goals than Benny. But I still stand by my statement. Even with new investment (which the club now has to do and would definitely be more costly), I think he no longer can get these men to go any further.

I'm not like DoC who is definitely spitting hellfire and fury on a keyboard but to me, just don't see Zidane getting any better with Madrid. Of course, if we wins the UCL, I'm gonna pretend I didn't write all of this and was always supporting him.

Pepe was irrelevant last season, he got freezed out starting with 2017 lol

The problem is we lost around 40-50 goals by selling morata, James and Mariano and BBC got even worse this season. Seriously our strikers are embarrassingly bad this year. Last year they were bad expect for Ronaldo at the end, now they scored in total 10 La Liga goals. Infact they don't move at all on the pitch it's fascinating to watch at times

We lost 36 goals selling those 3 and that's using all the competitions, not so much 40-50 goals. But that's 36 goals that need to come from someone else which has not and evidently would not be happening.

And that's assuming the players who stayed would score at the same as they were last season...  which they haven't come close to doing.

We can't score.  That simple.  It's not a question of style...  we get plenty of chances in the game.  We just don't put them away at all.

Teams tend to play with higher energy against us to begin with...  but once they have hope in the second half of getting a result, they play even harder.  We typically dashed their hopes nice and early... but since we can't score, every game is a battle.

And we're trying defend a scoring drought with Ramos and Marcelo in the back 4...  so it's not like we have a rock hard and intelligent defensive back 4 to fall back on. Navas missing 3 months and our backup gk being shit didn't help matters as well.

That's because he was winning back then?  Really????  When the race was tight and every point counted...  he played kids.  That's the sign of confidence in the ability of those players to get it done. ZZ had the confidence to give them a chance to perform in the most stressful of circumstances and they performed... hence he kept playing them.

When're you're behind 10+ points, there's less to lose by playing rotation players in fact.  Your chances of catching up are very low so there's less to lose.  Yet, he doesn't trust them.

In fact, the summer signings can't even make the team sheet.  Sure sign that those were players the manager wanted to buy.

Absolutely ridiculous this team What a coach

terrible coach that rode on his player's forms to amazingly win 2 CLs. he is actually awful, the way this team plays football is awful. gone are ramos last minutes headers, and we now look rubbish. form has dipped and drawing 2-2 against numancia at home is  a "serious performance" what a joke this guy, mental guru clown, can't wait till he resigns.