Ill just put this here because the other thread caused more controversy for its title than anything else.

But yes, Zidane is a poor coach, and a superb man manager, and from we have as evidence for now, that's mostly down to context more so that him doing club to club and leading an army of men ala mourinho. What i mean is, former madrid player, former madrid legend in every sense of the world, knows the players, turned coach, etc...

As a coach, he has been here almost two years, and has positively developed 0 in terms of football. If you can see an evolution in how this club plays football since he got here, i challenge to come here and to explain it.

He has thrived on creating a cocoon around his stars, who love him, givng them the freedom they want, and they turned up for him in big games, won big trophies, etc... that's the quality of the team we have paired with a manager that allows them to be happy.

That type of management has limits. we are seeing it now, this squad won a lot, they are not pushing as much as last season, and thus the same poor games we were winning last season, we are now drawing and losing. These guys only turn up for big games, and coast in la liga and other.

Where is the coaching? you know, breaking down another team with passing, movements, tactics, leveraging gaps, exploiting weaknesses etc... there is simply none of that. instead, we have the brilliant double sided left back that cost us a game, the brillant 442 that just results in cross cross cross cross cross cross. Experimenting 352 in a game we are looking and we barely created a chance with it (we did it last season vs sevilla and lost in copa by the way, we did not see it again after).

I know you guys will come here to talk about the trophies he won etc..., and we might still well win some this season, but it wont be down to his quality coaching up this team

Here we go again lol

Really do not get why he switched to a 3-5-2. Like at all. Nor his fetish with the 4-4-2 which does not work with the players we have. Nor the double full back which is weird to say the least. He has moments where he really looks like he belongs in the elite of managers and then, you have today where you wonder how the fk he won so much so fast.

I do not subscribe to the poor coach tagline but after today, do not blame anyone for jumping the gun or going crazy. Today was just bad on all levels. Mind you, the players showered themselves in shit so it was a fine combination.

Except Isco who really was the only one to show up against mighty Girona.

My opinion is the same as it was, Winning is not a cure all. Besides, Sports, you turned on Benzema when it became too obvious he was shit, you will turn on Zidane too when it becomes too obvious

I mean, he played Asensio and Lucas as wing backs in a system you could have tell none of the players had an idea of how to work it. I adore Zidane but he of all people should know we are not the most patient of clubs.

I agree with your points overall. Zidane is an excellent man manager and a sub-par coach. Personally, I think RM needs a man manager more than a coach, though, and I still think ZZ is the right man for the job. The problem is the squad desperately needed refreshing over the summer- we strengthened in areas we didn't need strengthening and we weakened areas we couldn't afford to weaken.

We are paying the price for not buying at least one forward to replace Morata/ Mariano. And if I were in charge we would have obviously cleared out both Benz and Bale, but selling one of them would have been nice.

Any manager in that position would struggle, and I am not saying he is blameless in this, because he does deserve some of the blame for not recognizing these problems, but some of it is out of his control.

Our spending in the past 3-4 windows has not been elite, so our expectations for what a "man-manager" can do with a squad like that needs to be tempered.

Pep and Mourinho are different but good "coaches," but also look at their spending. It has eclipsed ours 2-3 times over

Doc wrote:I mean, he played Asensio and Lucas as wing backs in a system you could have tell none of the players had an idea of how to work it. I adore Zidane but he of all people should know we are not the most patient of clubs.

that is the definition of being clueless, as i said in the intro, last time he played it, we lost to sevilla. Then he plays it again many months after when he is losing and the result is equally bad

we all know about the offense, zidane's biggest mistake so far, is doing away with competition in a bid to keep faith with the current group, how injury ridden bale remains here is a mystery, with cristiano in poor form, now is the time i'd expect benzema to give us goals, rather than a cf 101 lecture of what a striker should or should not be

we can't excuse the defense, yes we've had injuries, as a madrid fan, you can't go into the season thinking fitness will be at its finest, no matter how many health practitioners we hire and fire, it has nothing to do with the medics. but a lot of these defensive mistakes are schoolboy mistakes

the primary flaw imo has been the overconfidence in this group despite the poor return of some of them last season. 8 points is not a good look at all

Kneejerk.

We spent a billion to get past 1/8 in CL. now we have won everything under Zidane and he gets attacked.

Every coach has a different style. doesn't matter. he won us two f*cking CL's in a row. i will give him 5 trophyless seasons.

I blame him for not buying quality players in the summer btw.

Technically, Nick has been voicing this very same opinion since Zidane was hired so totally not knee jerk. Don't mind he has been winning way more than Nick's favourite managers but it's an opinion that he has been talked about before. Way before.

Everything so far is going as I expected. so no knee jerk for me. still annoys the hell outta of me to watch but after coming to the summit of football, it is only natural to go down.

complacency is the reason we lost to girona. bar isco, everyone were complacent due to recent successes getting into our heads. hopefully this loss brings everyone's minds back to earth.

Though our frontline really is something else. why Benz or CR7 are not scoring troubles me a great deal. I hope its not a sign of things to come.

I do not agree withj= this opinion, nick. You can say Zidane is a lot of things but "Poor" ain't one of them. Reckless would be more appropriate. Zidane has been quite reckless so far this campaign. Akin to Carlo, Zidane is doing almost everything right. He has rightfully placed trust on the team to bring him the results. what he is doing wrong is making sure complacency doesnt creep in for it has. There is nothing we could have done about Morata, he wanted to go, we don't stop people from leaving. some things are out of Zidane's control. our bad luck is one of them. we have been very unfortunate not to score goals. the golden age comes with its faults. having used to being champions our team has become more entitled and more lazy as a whole. it will take time to sort it out, in the meantime we just gotta endure and hope we recover faster before January.

The issue isn't coaching. You can't plan for your strikers having 1% efficiency. You just can't. Every time they miss, it demoralizes you a bit and gives energy to the opponent. In football, anything can happen if you leave hope for the opponent.

Besides, he wanted Mbappe and Flo didn't want to pay + didn't want to give up on Bale for ego reasons. So it's not like ZZ didn't go after an upgrade here.

My bigger worry is that we have ZERO attacking threat from our 3 CMs.

As far as the 352 and 442.... it's more because he doesn't trust Ashraf and Marcelo can't defend. They're trying to compensate and not put Ashraf in a position to fail. Takes a little time to get used to the 3 CB setup though.

8 point lead isn't bad and Barca are bound to slow down when the season gets cooking

Still in good position in CL

Started the CDR well

Problem is the form our players have. Benz and Ronaldo have been exceptionally crap and Bale is injured again. Lucas and Mayoral are not quality enough to play for Real. Asensio pre season hype seems to be over since he has not been playing well. It's funny because in these types of games James showed up

Another huge problem that I don't think people realize is our 3 man midfield. I bet you if we had a mid like Paulinho or Pogba or Kante playing either on the right or left side it will be much more efficient. Kroos and Modric aren't athletic enough to penetrate defenses. I'd give Kroos the exception since his passing, set piece play and control are better than Modric but I think it's time to think about a team post-Modric

Defense should be fine but injuries have been hurting us in that area.

To be honest Its still pretty early but I'm sure things will work out. But I hope this is a wake up call to management that some players aren't cutting like Benz, Bale, Vasquez and Mayjoral

Kovacic, to me, is Modric's most natural replacement and it is such a damn shame he got that injury at this stage. Not saying he is the saviour of all things but he would have definitely been most needed in some of our games post-injury.

8 point is no big deal lol, in this generation where Barca has 90 points per Liga, that’s a pretty foolish statement to make.

Also we have never remontada a league being 8 points behind.

Mr Nick09 wrote:8 point is no big deal lol, in this generation where Barca has 90 points per Liga, that’s a pretty foolish statement to make.

Also we have never remontada a league being 8 points behind.

Nothing is impossible and I remain purely optimistic of our chances.

I'm confident things will turn around. If we get to January and February with the same results then I'd panic, but now know

I agree Doc. I think Kova when fit and Ceballos deserve a shot at the starting 11

so we have entered the "nothing is impossible" zone eh? that has worked so great in la liga in the past 10 years right? sigh

I think you are saying Modric and Kroos are past it! I don't think that's the case at all. Kroos rarely stands out, consistency and passes are his strenghs. He seldom has been MoM and when team goes bad, I guess he along with the rest gets blamed. But I say the problem is the lack of finishing goals and poor final touches / passes. You can make a case that recently Modric has not been shining, but I say it's an interim phase and maybe his age is starting to effect his play. But if you look at the midfield over all with Ceballos, Kovacic  and Llorente in reserve, our midfield is probably the best we have ever had in terms of personnel and each of the reserves are capable of pushing the starters and yes Zidane should be doing more rotations. But I don't feel midfield is a problem.

There are defensive lapses, but it isn't the defense that is losing points or games for us. Quite simply it's the forward line. Ronaldo is struggling, as he did last year. The 5 game suspension didn't help and perhaps age creep is part of this. I think except for a few notable exceptions, we all agree that Benz and Bale are useless. Asensio is not a goal scorer and is struggling right now. Majoral just should not be on this team period and Lucas is well  ... limited. If he was a seldom used 6th attacker that would be fine, but with the rest of this front line crew, .... his limitations are severely exposed.

I don't know whether to agree or disagree with Nick re Zidane, but I certainly question some of his decisions. Plus I definitely have a different opinion than Sports when it comes to signing and player selection. In my humble opinion, Zidane is clearly in charge and Flo has followed his requests as long as they are reasonably within budgets.

I know Madrid never really participates in winter market, but for once just go out and buy "someone" who can score goals!!!!

and @Perucho, they did not start off CDR well. It was essentially our promising youth playing a third level team, slightly better than our Castilla. We only won because of two questionable penalties. Sure some kids impressed, but several others did not. And the way Team A played on Sunday compared to this CDR Team B, I doubt if the score line would have been different. Look I'm probably the most optimistic fan here and yet even I am saying this team is looking awful. We all know the team has talent, but as long as we have this very ineffective front line, we aren't going to win shit.

sportsczy wrote:The issue isn't coaching. You can't plan for your strikers having 1% efficiency. You just can't. Every time they miss, it demoralizes you a bit and gives energy to the opponent. In football, anything can happen if you leave hope for the opponent.

Besides, he wanted Mbappe and Flo didn't want to pay + didn't want to give up on Bale for ego reasons. So it's not like ZZ didn't go after an upgrade here.

My bigger worry is that we have ZERO attacking threat from our 3 CMs.

As far as the 352 and 442.... it's more because he doesn't trust Ashraf and Marcelo can't defend. They're trying to compensate and not put Ashraf in a position to fail. Takes a little time to get used to the 3 CB setup though.

Attempting a 3man cb when we rarely play such a setup AND varane going out wasn't very smart imo.

But I do understand his decisions... in any case, all Zidane can do right now is work with our frontline on the finer points of putting the goal in the back of the net. that will come with time.

We still have a good chance of winning la liga believe it or not. Just look @ Barcelona. Mehssi is doing all the work. the moment his form drops and it will, we will have the chance to get back in the title race. Suarez seems to be on the decline, its been a mehssi and a paulinho (lol) show.

Valencia's a darkhorse but such horses will get found out sooner rather than later. its only soon to be November, we just need to grit our teeth for now.

i just want to say, this is why it's good to be critical of the team at all times, win or lose, it's good to stay objective. This is an embarrassing CL loss that is not acceptable for a team like ours. Spurs rekt us good, and the goal we scored is merely consolation.

Just saying, Zidane is not a great coach and this generation took him further than his talent suggests.

I thought he had turned the corner after some CL games but clearly i was wrong, just his players delivering

No idea how is coaching these men. Like none. And I don't think the players have much of a clue either. Kroos as a DM, Casemiro as some weird b2b. No wingers in a 4-4-2. Starting Benzema because fk good reasoning. I mean, we lost to Spurs, and it wasn't bad luck. We got out played. By Spurs. 3-0. Our first group stage loss in 5 years.

Seriously, Zidane has real questions to answer and I have my doubts it'll actually improve come December.

Nearly all of our players look like a shell of what they once were... less than 6 months ago.

I truly don't understand it. The main issues we have had prior to Tottenham and Girona were mostly offensive- we were creating lots of chances and the front line looked like League players. Now we are getting played off the park by teams we really should be beating, and we are showing errors all over the pitch. Defensively so loose and nervous, midfield can't hold on to the ball to save their life, and our front 3 look like they are going to cry they are so hopeless.

Across the board everyone looks like shit, and they don't even look like they are trying.

I'm truly at a loss for words- not sure where we would go from here, but something needs to happen and soon, because at the moment it looks like we could lose to any team the put up against us

They won 2 CLs in a row, they all got extended, they all got paid. Motivation is gone, this is part of why the team needs to be revamped. BBC is way past its expiry, and our two forwards are over 30. they do not run anymore, they walk on the pitch and unless you cross the ball to them, nothing happens when they touch it.

This cycle is at its end.

Nothing will happen because any change suggests that something is wrong, which Zidane wont admit not to lose the trust he has from the locker room. He has been saying that everything is ok so he wont change that line, he can't, he loses credibility if he does.

So they will ride this till the end, and then make changes in the summer. They are all playing poorly, so expect them to stick it out, pick up form at some point down the line, but we risk a trophy less season of course.

I call the other Doc "The Eternal Optimist".

When you see The Eternal Optimist freak out as well, know that you're in a real crisis