I'm not a knee jerker. In fact, as you all know, I despise knee jerking. But we have played badly since Getafe, and even though we dominated this match, we drew. We lost, and drew, against bad small teams. Despite Valencia tearing shit up, we are losing the league already. Where is the Madrid of preseason that we were so excited about?

Are we in crisis? Why? The midfield? Parking the bus? Mourinho? How can we fix it? Is there hope?

We musn't give up, and we need to discuss this as I feel there is a big confusion. Hala Madrid!

Barca are losing if it makes you feel better.

We are in mini crisis ATM, but as soon we score just a goal everything will be back to normal, hopefully

IMO, teams have already found something to stop Madrid and abort attacks build up from the midfield.
If you focus on how Levante and Racing put their pressing high on Madrid players so the ball can't run quickly and clean, Alonso and his duo find a real problem to get out the ball forward. The second problem is that we have not offensive diversity so we stagnate in passing ball from one side to another with no real permutation and moves on the edge of the 18m. Most of the time we play width and we wait for some individual act to score.
Mou should learn that players qualities in not the solution but collectif qualities which make us a team.

Valencia, also, applied Madrid tactic against Barça in the supercopa !! so everyone is learning from other's error.

Well you can't call it crisis but we are under extreme pressure. i think the problem is Ozil, he's off form and he's responsible for our creativity, he is the only player that makes great chances. hope he regain his form ASAP.

El Pipita wrote:Well you can't call it crisis but we are under extreme pressure. i think the problem is Ozil, he's off form and he's responsible for our creativity, he is the only player that makes great chances. hope he regain his form ASAP.

Can't buil a team on only one player if you want to win la Liga (beat barça) and win the CL.
We have to build our own football conception and own system.
Btw, Kaka should start against Rayo Vallecano, it's reconciliation match.

I think part of the problem is injuries in the midfield and all round, as well as bad form and Mourinho being a stubborn ass. Can we recover though? I know a lot of people dont believe we are in a crisis, why dont you come on here and reassure us? #nottalkingtoanyoneinparticular

El Pipita wrote:Well you can't call it crisis but we are under extreme pressure. i think the problem is Ozil, he's off form and he's responsible for our creativity, he is the only player that makes great chances. hope he regain his form ASAP.

Definitely not about özil..Its the midfield, always have been. Lack of partnership, passing and covering the ground what kills us..Midfield duo of Lass and Xabi is no go! The only ones feeding our offense were cbs and wingers really, midfield was constantly struggling by a small club ffs. Our attack is crap too, players out of position, lack of passes, creativity etc. Mou needs to reshape our offence plan asap.
If only we had Sahin we would have won 4 matches out of 4, not to mention we wouldnt struggle to some small ass club.

What crisis are u talking about !! It's only that Barcelona impose a rythm of hell. We start badly the season that's right but to the point to say we are in crisis, that means nothing.
Look around Europe leagues you will notice a tough start for almost big teams (except Man Utd).
For expl, Man Utd won the Epl last year after 4 defeats and 8 draws, while we lost the Liga after 2 draws and 2 defeats.

We have a lot of things to fix, and we are lucky this happen in the beginnig of the season.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early for the "C" word.

No its not way too early. It's already a mini crisis and that's only because barca are dropping points.

Sahin will not be the problem solver, and in fact there is a chance he will come back play a few games then retire from another injury. I am not going to discuss the problems in the madrid section right now.

One positive note is Lass, he owned yesterday. To me he was the best madrid player.

Another good tip, but you already know i am going to say this, kaka needs to play more. He needs more playing time than 22 mins. Di Maria needs to be benched. We should work on improving kaka more. He's already our best winning card now (forget Ronaldo, he's a very emotional guy who gets shaken for the simplest of burdens).

Kaka and Lass. Lass for DM, Kaka for the attacking options, And we need a super striker. Benz is good, but not enough for all times. Higuain is not even scoring his hattricks against small teams anymore.

Varane needs to be a starter.

We aren't close to a crisis but more in a run of bad form plus stubbornness from mou.

La Liga has made me happy though these past few rounds, hope all the teams remain this determined till the end. Away games are always hard but these past few seasons have made us forget that.

The solution to our problems is easy yet hard. We have to leave the double pivot set-up if we can't bring the ball forward properly. Taking control of the midfield will make it way easier creating chances. Bypassing it won't do squat though.

I won't talk formations as it'll bring us to no end but mou has to have another plan, a plan which excludes Di Maria but has both our strikers and includes more midfielders. It won't work immediately but we have to have a plan B!

Our next game is at home, we should be able to grind out a victory there. It stops being an issue when we start getting points on the board again and confidence goes back up.

True getting 1 point out of 6 is much less than ideal but these are the natural ups and downs of a season. If we start losing consecutive games in all competitions I'd start using the C word.

But so long as we are still close to top spot and not far off the pace I wouldn't get worried like most of you divas.

Awesome Gif H.A.

makes me feel sad to look at di maria as if hes a noob

i hope mou finds a way to bring what was wished out of this group.

now that ive looked at even our pre season games, and the super cup,

the times that problems in the defense were mentioned specially surrounding carvalho, and the problems in midfield are far too grand to overlook, maybe we overated our form entirely... i want to see madrid get it going ffs.

pepe has gone mad, carvalho is past it, khedira has been injured so has sahin, coentrao has dissapointed and cant play in the pivot, the attack isnt creating opportunities and when we do we aint slotting them in with a high percentage, our midfield is getting over run and our defense aint look world class.

so what we gonna do mou?

The attack [Benz/Ronaldo/Higgy] just need goals to regain confidence and form, that's it. They need service to achieve that. You can't have them servicing themselves as they will fail doing it.

The midfield is an entire different story.

Is there a stat that tells us about the number of balls that are passed to Ronaldo by the other players as opposed to the total number of passes in the game done by madrid or something like that.

I want to dig deeper into the crisis and see if Ronaldo's bad form is hurting us more than we would like. Ronaldo's presence will also affect the mentality and dependency of the Madrid Players. If he's under performing then he should be subbed unless we are winning, because then the other players will step it up and know they have only themselves to count on.

Just another area to be understudied.

huntsman wrote:Is there a stat that tells us about the number of balls that are passed to Ronaldo by the other players as opposed to the total number of passes in the game done by madrid or something like that.

I want to dig deeper into the crisis and see if Ronaldo's bad form is hurting us more than we would like. Ronaldo's presence will also affect the mentality and dependency of the Madrid Players. If he's under performing then he should be subbed unless we are winning, because then the other players will step it up and know they have only themselves to count on.

Just another area to be understudied.

Who r you ?? :cyclops:

We don't know what possession football is.

Mourinho just expects us to win 'somehow' and by luck.

He doesn't bother if we're playing a 'lesser' team.

WE ARE IN A CRISIS. It we had of lost last night and Barca won, that would have been la liga (Already!!). The team is simply playing awful. They keep blaming the refs but the reality is they stink right now, have done so for last 3 games.

My assessment begins with Mourinho. Yes he is a great coach but he has flaws and is making mistakes. My first concern is his idea of using same starters all the time (although he did make changes last night). He believes that you have to be ready to play at any time, but it is a well known fact that you can't get in "game" shape from just practices nor from coming into game with only 5 or 10 minutes left. My second criticism of him is he is making the wrong changes at wrong time. Last night for instance his first change was Di Maria for Callejon yet Callejon was the only player that had decent chances in first half. Next is Mou can't teach nor direct offensive schemes. What is wrong with the team IMO is there is no offensive co-ordination, plays nor patience, they all just want to do it on their own. As Arbeloa said last night we are playing with our hearts not our heads and we have no patience.

Next issues for me are individual:

Di Maria, always wants to dribble (and his first move to the left is too predictable) and only looks for the pass when he is out of room.

CR7 - much the same as Di Maria plus his constant whining (I thought he said he would stop that). Then there is his free kicks. He has simply lost his touch. They should use other players for this at least occasionally and also give some confusion to wall with 1 or 2 others lined up to take kick (and let them take it every once in a while).

Kaka _ I'm afraid he just doesn't have it.

Alonso partner - we need to get Sahin healthy and pay along side Alonso. We need more creativity in MF. Coentrao needs to be a sub not a starter.

Carvalho - he is losing it quickly (about the only thing he is doing quickly these days). Let's play Varane and Ramos in his spot more often and make Carvalho a sub.

Pepe - needs to keep his head.

Benzema - it didn't happen last night but every other game he has missed wide open goals. If we every do get back to creativity and passing, he needs to put in the final touch.

This team has the players and the talent (I believe in all 23 of them) and it's not too late particularly since barca is not dominating yet. They just have to get better quickly (and hopefully Mou can let his assistants organize the offensive plays).

Some people here can over react it's just a loss of form obviously there are some problems but it only has been 2 games.

It is a crisis Magricos. You don't lose games naturally without being a crisis. The fact that we have no solid backup for Khedira is big. In fact I'm surprised why losing Khedira is so bad! We have played many times without him and been fine.... I think the issue is deeper than that, I think Xabi is declining...

We are 1 point behind barca if it makes everyone feel better.

My main concern is that we will continue this run of form and drop more points.

i think Higgy needs to start games
he seems to be returning to pace
and his dynamism in attack will surely assist Ozil and co.

Think the word "crisis" is the wrong choice. There are issues within in the team that can be addressed but crisis is not the word I would use nor actually promote...

I do think it's somewhat a crisis. Yes, our midfield is poor at the moment, but I still don't think it's the issue.

The issue is our lack of clinical attacking. Benzema keeps missing the wide open goals, and Ronaldo... is Ronaldo. The guy has never been clinical to begin. Higuain is not in form to be clinical and Özil is being weird. Özils form is also abit of the issue.

We should have signed Aguero tbh