Touches of the ball:

Modric 43
Kova 34







Danilo 18
Navas 13


















Benzema 7

Unbelievable lol

Typical Benzema this season.

I love Lucas, but that's three golden opportunities in this week that he has missed.

oh my god this small-team mentality is really pissing me off! You're Real Madrid, you're playing at home against Sporting freaking Gijon with just one goal lead and 10 min to go.

Attack, goddammit, attack!

You'd think the missed penalty of Sporting would stir our guys out of their slumber and up their pathetic level of intensity. But nooo, they're protecting their one-goal lead while Sporting is attacking us...at home.

I have no sympathy for cowards.

I hope the lads enjoyed playing in the rain, it looked like fun.

Also, the Bernabeu has lost patience with Benzema yet again.

I wouldn't call it "protecting the lead" more like not shifting a gear when we have no reason to do so. We are going to play 2 high tempo games in a row. This game is just a nuisance where all we need to do is pick up 3 points and go home happy

Edit: @doc, is it just me or was Benz booed at the end whenever he touched the ball. It was hard to tell amongst all the other noise of discontent i heard. It was obviously not towards the team because i couldn't hear any whistles at the final whistle

We were really banking on Sporting being bad and they actually proved that quite well. But if they were a high flying La Liga team, pretty certain our mentality would have been different.

Still, our 2nd half was actually worst than our 1st so a bad match all around. 3 points though so I'm hoping La Real does La Real things and not f up.

@Hala
At the end of the match, it was a mixture of jeers and cheers. But whenever Benzema got the ball, he was jeered. That was very certain. I was hoping he would have gotten a goal but not even that was happening for him.

I am a little disappointed Casemiro did not come in today even for 10 mins. I know the weather conditions were bad and we made this game closer than it should've been. Still it has never deterred ZZ before. Even if he played the full game against Leonesa I doubt he is going to be match fit enough to start vs Barca. Defending like this and Messi puts 3 past us with his eyes closed. Now I know we had a few fringe players but still. Sick and tired of playing a man less every single game, 2 less when Ronaldo decides he can't be arsed. Luckily Ronaldo is in fine form right now attacking and tracking back

You should always try to keep at least a two-goal lead from the opposition to prevent a last minute upset. When we were just 2-1 up, we should've pushed for a third goal to put the game to bed. Instead we lowered our guards and dropped the intensity, which gave Sporting a little confidence and ultimately won them a penalty. Imagine if their penalty had gotten in and we ended up dropping two points.

I'm happy for the three points, but this mentality is really getting on my nerves and I don't want it to get anywhere near Madrid. Unfortunately, Z seems to be an ardent fan of it and I'll have to just get used to it.

I am pretty sure had Sporting scored from the penalty we would have gone to the other end and scored the winner. We just didn't look like we wanted to expend so much energy going back and force. This game looked eerily similar to the Legia game were we go 2-0 up after an explosive start, go to sleep after the goal cushion and are nearly made to pay for it.

Let's not forget we rotated heavily this game. This was a "nothing to see here" kind of game imo

With all due respect DoC, that's why Zidane is a coach and you're not.

When you have only been able to keep a clean sheet in two games without Casemiro, sitting back seems pretty reasonable and safe compared to go all out.

James is a waste.

wasting a non euro player spot in the team.

best thing for him is to move for himself and the team

Sometimes, all you need to do to earn my respect is being truthful:

It was a game to forget as things didn't go the way we wanted, but I'll take the three points

The weather was not what hurt us. We were lacking in other areas.

When I was a Madrid player, we were leaders in all competitions one season but ended up winning nothing

An unbeaten streak is nice to have, but what really matters is where we finish at the end of the season.

I have many things against Z, but I'm grateful that he doesn't throw his players under the bus, nor does he try to find excuses to justify a poor showing. He just owns up to it.

I was a little upset with our performance against Sporting. But it's nice to know that we don't have a classless, immature manager.

And I'm pretty sure he wouldn't get half this much criticism (or perhaps no criticism at all) if he was coaching another team (any team). But the Bernabeu crowd is the toughest one in the world and he knew this when he signed up for what I consider to be the toughest job in world football.

I pride myself to be part of a fanbase that doesn't tolerate mediocrity and constantly criticizes its club, even for minor details.

So Z, thanks for the three points today, but I promise you, if you lose to Barça, we'll bury you with criticism. Yes, even with all the injuries we have.

His player selection will be key if we want to win against Barca. We could've had the upperhand with Bale v Roberto but since he is injured I think we should play witj one more midfielder and drop Benz. Their midfield is their weak point this season and if we let Modric and Kova express themselves by having Casemiro behind them we should be able to get the better of their midfield. I want to see a line up like this:


Even if we don't win it will be hard to penetrate us

That's not a bad lineup, but I really have my doubts about Z's willingness to bench Benzema.

I hope he makes the right call because Benzema's performance against Sporting was horrendous and if he's going to be just as lazy and useless against Barça than I'd rather he doesn't play at all.

i get your point about benz, but its a huge risk to bench a player like him against barcelona, especially considering the fact that he does quite well against them in terms of goals. when you have bale injured, the last thing you want to do is put yourself in a puddle and bench benzema. you have to realize, games are different; because you don't play well against sporting, doesn't automatically mean you'll flop against barcelona, especially if there's a chance the latter might give us space to exploit.

i don't know, i hope we can be defensively sensible, no unnecessary cards and full concentration for the whole 90 plus minutes. a game like that requires 100 percent commitment on the attacking and defensive ends of the pitch, especially now with all these men of glass type injuries we have been suffering

For Barca. Benzema has a good history against them meanwhile Morata seems to be better off the bench against tired legs.

James might work in the hole behind Ronaldo

i don't think it's a huge risk considering he has been terrible all season. We need a team that will be running all game, pressing, defending, attacking. Having to play with 10 men against Barca will be very hard. We had to sub on Jese last season to be able to beat them. We need a striker that can make runs and give their CBs hell. Ronaldo can do that. And with Casemiro bringing defensive stability our midfield can focus on keeping the ball and create openings we can exploit. Would've loved Morata to start this game but he is unavailable unfortunately

Hell will freeze over before James in his current form starts a clasico. His form is horrendous, and he is a huge liability in defense. Even as a sub i dont think he can get on.

Benzema however, of course he will start

we are looking at

unless injuries,

yeah, james hasn't been in form for like two seasons now. that transfer has been looking like a horror show with every passing minute. sometimes i forget the club spent 80 million on him (based solely on a handful of world cup games)

Would anyone consider James to be a more bad piece of transfer than Kaka because James has at least 1 good season, full season, under his belt with Madrid. Can't recall Kaka being fully fit for a season or even contributing meaningfully bar one or two La Liga matches.

He did contribute alright...........to our semi final loss to Bayern in CL and then refusing to leave forcing Sarabia to go elsewhere

Our four worst purchases of all time.

1. Gravenson
2. Drente
3. Kaka
4. James


Certainly by price, the latter two rank at the top of the list, but the other two were huge disappointments and in both cases we had better options in house. Actually same can be said for Kaka and James.

Unlike Kaka I don't think James is blocking any canteranos from playing for the first team. James is the one who is the odd man out because we don't play with an AM and the closest canterano to the first team is a guy who is playing CDM

As for the worst purchase, we have a few that deserve to be in the top 5 ahead of James. He isn't a bad player he just doesn't fit into the 2 systems that we use. Kaka is definitely the worst purchase we have made in my lifetime, the names after that are debatable. I mean we bought guys like Woodgate (perma injured calamity), Gago (forever a talent), Gravesen (thuglife), Cicinho (partyboy), Cassano (party boy) and more recently Coentrao and Danilo. James' problem is his attitude, he is hardly the only player who has been benched for a prolonged period of time. I remember Mou benching Pepe when he made a statement of support for Iker and he came back the next season like a new player much calmer, classier and much better.

James is going to get his chances. We are playing a game every 3 days and ZZ is rotating nicely, he just needs to take advantage of the mins he gets