LaLiga finally under way and what a better to start it than playing one of our bogey teams awsy from home. LaReal always give us a difficult time when we play them. Suprisingly enough last season's encounter was probably the only time we successfully thwarted their attack and played a solid match overall. If we manage to play like that again we are definitely going to win

Every RM manager in recent time has not been able to win the first match of the season, is ZZ going to be the guy that breaks that curse?? We shall see. ZZ is rewarding everyome from last season by not buying any players, and the squad harmony has been very positive this entire pre season. I hope they thank him for this with an excellent season and winning trophies particularly the big 2.

We have a few absences, Modric is suspended, Pepe, Ronaldo and Coentrao (suprise suprise) are trying to get their fittness up to scratch before they join full throttle training with the rest of their peers. Navas is nearing his xomeback and has been training hard solo. Benzema AGAIN has been reinjured and has not practiced with the team. This has been going on all preseason. Hopefully he takes care of his body and doesn't come back before he is ready

Probable line up:


The only question mark is likely to be the left wing position. Rest of the XI is set

Let's do this!!!!

Kiko is such an average keeper lol, I hope keygod will return soon

And I bet James starts despite being the less deserving player

I actually think Lucas plays as the CM/winger behind Bale, who will obviously start at RW. I see the lineup like this:

Kiko
Carvajal - Varane - Ramos - Marcelo
Vasquez - Casemiro - Kroos
Bale - Morata - Asensio

I think this is how it goes down.

Lol Lucas at CM it's so random, where is that coming from?

It's not random.  ZZ has run a 442 plenty of times away from the Bernabeu.  I think this situation calls for it.  Bale and Morata would be the striking duo, you have two edge CM/B2B/Wingers (whatever you want to call it) in Vasquez and Asensio.  Casemiro and Kroos handle the middle of the park.

All it does is push Bale more into the middle of the park into scoring areas as opposed to starting wide. We need him to be a scorer right now with CR and Benz out. Cannot count on Morata alone at this point.

If we need the extra attack, we can make the appropriate subs around the 65 min mark.

Hey hala... we should keep track of the number of good and bad crosses our team makes each game. I think it would be interesting.

I'm also going to look at the number of times our CMs dribble forward past an opposition CM. Want to see if anyone does it other than Modric.

Agreed. I'll probably lose count though Marcelo alone will probably be guilty of 90% of the poor crosses

I think I would join in on that count. Though I don't see why we would be implementing a crossing game with the players at our disposal.

LaReal manager: We have analysed RM and we know their flaws

Our flaws, lol. Pretty sure the extent of his analysis was just to kinda watch a match. Everyone knows Madrid's flaws. I know Madrid flaws. Unfortunately Eusebio's team is full of flaws themselves so I hope he prepared them. Well, I actually hope he didn't...

ZZ:Benz will be out for 3 weeks due to back/hip injury

halamadrid2 wrote:ZZ:Benz will be out for 3 weeks due to back/hip injury

Well, shit.

3 weeks is then going to become an additional 4 weeks and so on

We have an amazing medical team what did you expect Turok

I just read that this is the 5th season in a row that Ronaldo is missing the LaReal away game

Blaming the medical team is easy which I don't mind but don't you think it's about time Benzema actually starts to take responsibility for taking more care of his body?

Other than last season, Benzema had gone the previous 5 seasons with 48, 52, 50, 52 and 46 appearances for Madrid.  Just to compare, Ronaldo went 54, 55, 55, 47 and 54 in that span.  Bale...  41, 42, 44, 44 and 48.

Even last season, Bale had 30 appearances, CR 48 and Benz 36.

I think the issue is not that he's not taking care of himself.  it's that it's a lower back/hip injury.  Same injury as he had all last season.  You never really shake those.  He's been managing the back issues his whole career at Madrid fine mostly... but the hip is new. When multiple areas are messed up, hard to compensate.

I don't think it's fault of either parties. Benzema or medical team. It's evident from the pattern of last three seasons that Benzema is getting highly injury prone. He never was a athletic specimen and given his weight and position he plays in it is understandable. Let's hope Morata can stay fit entire season.

Not to worry. Looks like Mariano is being added to squad as Benz's health is too unpredicable (well actually is very predicable, same as with Coentrao).

Only issue (for some of you) is it's one too many Spanish!

Maybe I haven't been following what Bill has been mentioning but it is best to ask here (and not to make a new thread):

Do posters here actually have an issue with the Spaniards at the club or is it that they just happen to be Spanish?

Nope, it's that us vs the world mentality, i dont think anyone here cares about the amount of spanish players in the team but Bill

I don't give two shits that morata is Spanish. How about this, he can score some goals tommorow and shut me up. If he costs us points, he'll shut you up hopefully

That's a funny ultimatum given the fact that his competitor has never scored away against LaReal in his whole Madrid career. The only striker we had that scored against Sociedad was Pipita. Does that mean Morata is better than his competitor if he scored seeing as he did in 1 game what his competitor couldn't do in 6 seasons??

Seriously relax yeah, it's not like he's stinking the place up. His link up play has been very good we just haven't been able to put good balls into the box. Rome wasn't built in a day people

He hasn't been making the right runs and he is in all sorts of wrong positions. I'm not relaxed, I don't want to see us lose because we can't score. I hope he proves me wrong

For Hala who now is trying to find crazy little statistical things to justify his argument.... so Benzema has 5 assists AWAY at Real Sociedad.  No goals.  But here are some goals in the Bernabeu against La Real... he has 8 of those to go with another 3 assists.

Here are a few goals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWGJf53tkh4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF0iqfGTFyQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyJr-KH3FBE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-K6ssO_QaU

The thing with Madrid away games is that, in the past, we play a counter attack style where Benzema becomes more a facilitating piece to move the ball to the guys who are targeted to score because of their speed in Ronaldo and Bale.

I personally think that, if we are counter attacking, it works well for Morata. It's when we need to create play in a normal situation where he struggled like crazy at Juve.

Again, I'll repeat it... Morata's goal totals the last 2 years at Juve were 15 and 12. It's pretty good. But he got a lot of those in cup competitions where he scored 12 goals in 30 appearances. In league, he only scored 15 in 63 appearances. That's what he is.