Real Madrid vs Celta Vigo

Morata NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Morata needs to work on his 1v1s

Zidane needs to work on his subs too tbh

How can he prefer Lucas over Isco and James

guest7 wrote:Zidane needs to work on his subs too tbh

How can he prefer Lucas over Isco and James

A bit baffled too but Lucas is always solid when he comes on so I ain't too mad about it.

ffs

Marcelo sleeping when Ramos shifted over.

Getting tired of Vazquez as first sub. He's not a particularly good player...

1-1

Jesus... A draw incoming 99% sure.

CR must be crying now. He would put 3+ today

SUPER TONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Identical to a goal he made a season or two ago. Really good at those shots

Marcelo is killing me with his defense.

wtf is Carvajal doing playing LB... and of course, Marcelo doesn't see it and the back side was wide open. Thank god Celta missed it.

Poor games by Casemiro and Marcelo. They were getting dribbled for fun. Carvajal a bit too.

But we won, so who cares lol.

Lucas should have started this game. We missed his directness. He created 4/5 good chances in just 10 mins. Hopefully he starts next game, he is so good

James with an excellent cameo. Hopefully this is the rotten leaf he is turning and on the way up. For me i dont think Asensio does enough to warrant first off the bench sub. Apart from the goals he is usually very anonynous in games and has trouble keepig his position

Also i cant wait to have Pepe back. Lost count on the amount of times Celta player were allowed to run at us without Rmos or Varane tackling them. Our midfielders were our defenders basically. Pepe would push them aside so many times they wouldn't come back again. Hopefully he starts next game

Marcelo though did he do anything right? Horrendous game from him. And Morata being subbed just when he started picking up wth was that about?

Anyways, 3 points won by the skin of our teeth. We nneed to attack with more purpose next game from start. That first half was an absolute waste

You only tackle if you're the last defender if you're 100% sure to get the ball.  If you have cover, fair enough... you can take the risk.  But Varane and Ramos were often the last men and had to stay on their feet.  

Our defensive midfield was awful.  You saw outnumbered attacks against our back 4 (or really 3 given marcelo) all the time.  Only good plays I saw were a couple by Casemiro and one really good one by Kroos late.  Other than that, it was swiss cheese in the middle.

Thought the CBs did well mostly. The goal was Marcelo's fault.

We're only 3 games from breaking a record of going without a loss.

That's why I believe we're going to lose one of the upcoming matches.

Hope I'm wrong tho

It's telling when our Motms are the midfielders Kroos followed by Modric then Casemiro Marcelo and Ramos should hold their heads in shame. I expect this from Ramos but Marcelo needs to get his shite together

Na only 2 games now @guest. We have won 14 consecutive games, record is standing at 15

we got three points, thats what matters, but this game was such a bore to watch...
I have been saying it about asensio, he has been very average because he is played on the left...same thing happened to jese when we kept playing him on d right....asensio has been messed up so far...too much hype..Zidane should please put him on the right...
bale was so annoying today, he wasnt even tracking back..horrible game, but at least we got 3 points..

I really don't know if I can wait till March for Ramos and Marcelo to get their shit in order because that match gave a nice glimpse into how, um, shitty they both can be.

guest7 wrote:We're only 3 games from breaking a record of going without a loss.

That's why I believe we're going to lose one of the upcoming matches.

Hope I'm wrong tho

halamadrid2 wrote:Na only 2 games now @guest. We have won 14 consecutive games, record is standing at 15

i really dislike these "records" or "accolades" that are spewed in the beginning or the middle of the season. i hope the players are paying as LITTLE attention to it as possible. you don't even get a cookie for such "records". let's keep our eyes on every individual game, and thus the main prize at the end.

the last "record" we kept talking about, at the end of the season, we watched the rivals win all 3 titles. 73 and 9 means NOTHING, if you don't crown it with a ring. btw, today's game, i don't even know what to say, a lot of inconsistencies....marcelo was however consistent with his "i forget i'm a left back, not a number 11"

Marcelo was neither here nor there yesterday. His passing was atrocious, he managed to miscontrol simple passes, he got beat to easy and was a no show in attack. It doesn't help when Asensio forgets he is a left winger and leaves Marcelo on his own out there but man he did everything wrong yesterday.

I am watching the game again i dont understand why its only our midfielders and Carvajal who constantly put in tackles. Varane and Marcelo in contrast had none and Ramos one, no wonder Celta liked to run at them. And for the goal Varane needs to push Guidetti off the ball, Ramos needs to stick to his bloody position and Marcelo needs to be quicker, not to mention Kiko was too far off his goal line. So much fail in that goal, just like the one against Sevilla in the supercup

I thought Morata had a good second half, Bale was anonymous throughout and Asensio got as many touches of the ball as Lucas in 30 more minutes. No wonder Morata tried to do everything himself, he was literally feeding on scraps.

I liked Casemiro, Kroos and Modric this game, especially the former 2 who were everywhere winning the ball back. I remember seeing Kroos win the ball back and releasing it to someone who went solo and lost the ball and Kroos jumping up and down in frustration I liked that hunger in him

From the first half i noticed that Celta were man marking our players and the ball was just coming back to Ramos and Varane 30s after they released it, Celta were happy to time waste, taking time during goal kicks and throw ins which frustrated our players. Casemiro should be happy this reff was card shy because he should've had a yellow for lashing out in frustration.

Up until our goal we were comfortable. After the goal on the other hand, we forgot the concept of shape and tracking back. Carvajal was on the left at one point, Ramos was playing RCB on another, Bale jogging back when 2 players were running at Marcelo.

I think we underestimated them due to the drubbing we gave them and them losing the opening game. Because when you compare how we played this game to how we played against LaReal who are normally our bogey team you could tell there was a huge difference. Against LaReal every single player did not stop running until the final whistle, we made use of cross field balls to relieve pressure, all attackers tracking back and attacking with purpose. This game we did everything opposite to that, only the midfielders working hard, the attack was nowhere to be seen and the defence a giant calamity. But at least we won which is the most important thing. This is the kind of game we used to draw/lose under Rafa and Carlo. ZZ has brought belief into this team that even when we get scored on in the last 10 mins we can still get back and score another one.

Now all we need is Barca dropping points and this has been a perfect weekend

@tito, records are a nice bonus tbh. If we made breaking records our goals we'd be winning every game in order to break some 1910 record of winning all games in a season Records are something us fans and media can discuss. Doubt the team cares unless its individual records. The last time players had records in their midst we got hammered by Wolfsburg and Ronaldo went on his longest scoring drought lol

The issue I had with Casemiro is that he was playing higher and there was space behind him in this game.  So Celta players were able to find room between him and the back 4 easily.  So the line gaps were all wrong.  It reminded me of the start of last year because our CBs were reacting to everything and backpedaling as opposed to being aggressive and attacking the play...  You can't really tackle or do anything aggressive when you're defending in or around your box.  It's far too risky.  First game in a while where I thought Casemiro was positionally poor.

Kroos does what he can... but come on, he won one maybe two balls and the opposition can run past him at will.  It was like that with Germany NT too.  Modric is serviceable defensively... but his fitness isn't quite there right now.

Our line gaps weren't good so we couldn't control the ball.  We also left the back 4 exposed because the midfield was bit too high.... which is fine btw as long as they can hold the ball and allow the back 4 to also push up.  But the ball retention wasn't good enough (especially by Casemiro) so the CBs stayed conservative. The reason ZZ did this btw is that the attack isn't good enough with just Bale, Asensio and Morata. It's not like BBC obviously. So we need the midfielders to actually do their entire job instead of parts of it... they can't ignore their role on the attack. So you had Modric and Kroos play higher up and participate in the attack and Casemiro also play higher as a result.

There's a reason we look more organized when we're conservative.  We don't have the horses to play an aggressive possession-focused attack relying on pressure.  Just don't.  We didn't address any of the weaknesses we had over the mercato so we just are going to have to live with it.  Imo, we're going to play a very defensive style this season mostly due to necessity.

Celta had 2 shots up until they scored and we owe that to Kroos and Casemiro. Casemiro had 7 tackles, the highest in the team and 2 interceptions the 3rd highest in the team. He was as he always is defensively. Celta were able to counter as we pushed 50 players forward after they scored that God forsaken goal. Kroos pushed up abit and Casemiro became a lone midfielder having to go left and right to close off passing lanes. That's when Celta were the most dangerous, even then apart from 2 or so dangerous crosses and long balls they were meh. They couldn't even get a 3v1 right

The secret is attack and defend as a team, only 1 lazy attacker can destabilise the defensive shape. We had 3 lazy attackers this game both in defence and attack so midfield took over most of the job. Modric taking long shots, Kroos scoring, Casemiro pressing high up the pitch. If anything we should be angry at the attack. The midfield was absolutely fine, in fact Kroos had more fire in him this game than he's had in all of last season, no kidding

Celta were crossing or trying to make quick linkup plays a ton to take advantage of our crap wide defense.  They would start in, suck in our defense there and then push it wide.  A lot of those plays don't show up statistically because they ended up getting deflected before they reached the final player or the final pass was just poor.

The thing that stood out for me statistically was that we had 496 total passes and Celta had 429.  That's pretty close.

Also, we averaged 5 passes per possession while Celta averaged 4...  again, that's not that far off.

Possession was 56% for Madrid to 44% to Celta... again very close.

We weren't controlling anything.  The shot statistics are more a testament that we have better execution at the end of plays compared to Celta, which goes without saying.  It also shows that our last defenders did a good job to abort things at the end. It says nothing about what happened in the middle of the pitch.

All the stats I mentioned above are indicative of play in the middle of the pitch...