Real Madrid vs Levante

Modric and Marcelo just can’t start together anymore...

Freeza wrote:Modric and Marcelo just can’t start together anymore...

Honestly, they are not even in my top 3 of those who greatly disappointed me tonight.

Marcelo at least created a great opportunity for Hazard to score, and Modric kept trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to score as well (unlike our forwards who seem to become allergic to the ball when they step in the box.)

Yeah, Real Madrid doesn't wanna win this title.

The Demon of Carthage wrote:

Freeza wrote:Modric and Marcelo just can’t start together anymore...

Honestly, they are not even in my top 3 of those who greatly disappointed me tonight.

Marcelo at least created a great opportunity for Hazard to score, and Modric kept trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to score as well (unlike our forwards who seem to become allergic to the ball when they step in the box.)

He gave up five big chances from defensive lapses and didn’t create shit. That’s not good enough.

When is Marca or AS gonna talk about the quite poor performances of Dani Carvajal? Feel like this is beyond ridiculous now.

Doc wrote:When is Marca or AS gonna talk about the quite poor performances of Dani Carvajal? Feel like this is beyond ridiculous now.

I can’t deal with us playing those backs when we’ve got so much talent on those positions.

Really hope Achraf gets a shot. He’d fit great as the lone back who can’t defend. Don’t like having two of those.

FT. 1-0 Levante.

Like I said it's cruel, really cruel especially when you remember all the chances we created, but we deserve it. We totally deserve this loss and hats off to Levante for walking away with the three points tonight.

When you squander your all of your chances, you really can't blame nobody but yourself if you lose.

No disrespect to Levante, but tonight we lost and dropped points to a team that lost 5 out of their last 6 games in the league. There's a absolutely no excuse for this, and if I'm being totally honest here, this is not a trait of a champion or even a title contender.

We can of course take some comfort in the fact that we played really well at times and created many chances that any half decent striker in Europe should be able to convert, but ultimately the defeat will cast a shadow over anything positive tonight.

The most important thing here is to not let this defeat get in between us and City and we also have to make sure not to be this wasteful against them or Barça after them, otherwise it's game over.

It really hurts to see how easy we're making it for Barça to stay in the race and even win it even though they're struggling with so many problems of their own, and some can even argue that they are probably the worst Barça side in a very long time.

Our forwards tonight let the team down, especially Benzema, and to a lesser extent Hazard. Let's hope they find their goalscoring boots against City.

Disgusted throughout the whole game. Simple as

titosantill wrote:Disgusted throughout the whole game. Simple as

Same.

So we're opening up and creating chances... and playing generally better football. Yet we can't score and lose games.

The issue is scoring. End of. Giving up 1 goal shouldn't lead to a loss.

Also, we have fullbacks that can't defend, can't cross, can't shoot and who have failing technique (Carvajal moresol; Marcelo is just getting old).

Mendy was rested because he was 1 yellow away from suspension. Valverde.... I honestly didn't think Modric was that bad. The problem is actually Kroos imo.

I'd give Benzema Marcelo and Kroos all negative 0 if there was such a thing. Marcelo can't play at a high level, Benzema passing it instead of shooting in front of goal and Kroos doing his usual stuff killing every attack going forward and passing it sideways and backwards

Let me guys just point out the fact that if our forwards converted 2 or 3 of their gazillion chances, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Blaming an ageing Marcelo and Modric for the defeat even though the guys playing in front of them could've buried the game in the first 30 min is a mute point as far as I'm concerned.

They might've caused the team to struggle at times, but the main culprits here are the ones who didn't pull the trigger up front.

This is the problem, and it's a serious one. If your striker is not converting their hances, you can't mathematically win the game and the best you could do at that point is a draw.

Let's call spade a spade here, this loss was on Benzema. He is the main goal scorer and he got proper service and he fluffed his lines. Hilariously.

Yes, Marcelo and Modric as starters are not a thing, yes Kroos can be extremely frustrating but Benzema got the service and the chances he needed to at least score 1 goal and he did shit today. Madrid, no, fucking Zidane needs to realise that relying on Benzema ONLY for your goals is not a strategy that is gonna warrant consistent scoring.

Needless to say, I still hate how this team is being coached. Just, not a fan of it at all.

Well, they keep trying to bring Bale back for goals... but that's failed. Jovic is apparently a head case.

Hazard missed a couple of big ones too with Benzema. It was just poor finishing by both of them.

We need a scorer opposite Hazard and Benzema... and we don't have any. For a club like Real Madrid, that's unacceptable.

This is why I'm so pissed off with signing kids in diapers and expecting them to contribute...

I don't want to big up Haaland and get a permanent bias tag again, but I went from watching Dortmund vs Werder Bremen to RM vs Levante today. The Dortmund match was incredibly boring, and they hardly created much beyond half chances. That's pretty much how it's been since both of their most creative players got injured and Sancho went into glory hunting mode. But they scored, and of course Haaland scored.. from a pretty tight angle, with his weak foot, assisted by Achraf. I don't imagine Haaland will ever play for us, but I've learnt from watching his interviews and most recent performances that he's an obsessive psychopath, similarly to CR7. Apparently, he's been like that since Kindergarten. He was even pissed off in his post-match interview with a Norwegian reporter, because he was disappointed in himself for not converting all of his scrappy chances into a hattrick. His worst performance of the season, but still left with a goal to his name.

I miss having that type of obsessive, ruthless, alpha male up front. We had a luxury of chances today. We often do. But we're simply not capable of converting them on a consistent basis. The jury's still out on Jovic. I don't think he had the best of starts to life in Madrid, and I like to think that time and confidence will, at the very least, make him a more reliable contributor to this team's efforts, if he's even allowed enough time to find form before we decide to ship him out. I honestly haven't felt like we've had a reliable goalscorer since CR left, and that's despite him needing half a season to hit peak form during his last two seasons with us.

Even during Benzema's relatively long run of form, I just couldn't shake this feeling that it wasn't going to last. I bet I wasn't alone in thinking so. I can't wait to find out what our team looks like next season. We have many things to be optimistic about regarding the future of the club, but it's actually quite odd that we're lacking a reliable goalscoring individual, of all things. We seem to have always had those. Even a 40 year old Zlatan would've given me some peace of mind, because I know he's the type of guy who at least attempts to take matters into his own hands, regardless of how the rest of his team performs - something Casemiro and Ramos have done on occasion as well, but their primary jobs are, and should be, to defend.

The Demon of Carthage wrote:Let me guys just point out the fact that if our forwards converted 2 or 3 of their gazillion chances, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Blaming an ageing Marcelo and Modric for the defeat even though the guys playing in front of them could've buried the game in the first 30 min is a mute point as far as I'm concerned.

They might've caused the team to struggle at times, but the main culprits here are the ones who didn't pull the trigger up front.

This is the problem, and it's a serious one. If your striker is not converting their hances, you can't mathematically win the game and the best you could do at that point is a draw.

Certainly agree in regard to Modric, I think he has been treated unfairly. I would undoubtedly include him alongside Casemiro and Valverde and brush Kroos aside. Modric is constantly moving the ball forward and is much better at tracking back and forth. With Fede and Casemiro there, Modric can focus more on his offense which I say is much better than Kroos'.

Today's front 3 is arguably the best we have, and they certainly work well. The problem is none of them can score! And again, we purchased Jovic to solve this problem and he is only increasing the problem.

I don't think Modric was to blame for anything in this match, but I really disagree with you when you say he's been treated unfairly, and I also can't agree with your sudden rating or favorability of him ahead of Kroos. Modric has had a lot of rest this season. He's had his fair share of awful performances for us in recent time, and one lively performance doesn't change that. I thought it was a bit weird when I read all of the sudden praise for Kroos earlier in the season, considering he was harshly criticized not long before that. Similarly, I'm surprised that you're suddenly seeing the positives in Modric now. They both have their respective limitations, but I think Kroos has shown more consistency and reliability lately, and Modric has been mostly disappointing - especially, when playing from the start.

Seriously Benzema was the big reason we lost the game.

Shoot you fucking idiot.

Glad i didn't get to watch this game.

in 3 weeks we went from 100 to 0 lol. i think this is a wake up call. we are not as good as we think we are.

honestly i don't care about the City game and CL that much. i just want us to win the Clasico and be back on top and stay on top and win the league.

Mamad wrote:Glad i didn't get to watch this game.

in 3 weeks we went from 100 to 0 lol. i think this is a wake up call. we are not as good as we think we are.

honestly i don't care about the City game and CL that much. i just want us to win the Clasico and be back on top and stay on top and win the league.

I may be more pessimistic than most of our fans on here, but I don’t think we were ever at «100» and that period of good form wasn’t anywhere long enough to assume that it was going to be smooth sailing onwards, in my humble opinion.

By 100 i meant from what we expected. at the beginning of the season we got humiliated in friendly matches and imagining to be in a good position to win the treble was really hard.

3 weeks ago with Barca out we had a very very good shot at CDR. we had a 3 points lead over a weak Barca in Liga. and in the CL we do what we do. and Hazard was coming back ( ). so it was 100 if you ask me.

some of the points we lost in Bernabeu is laughable. against sh*t teams. Barca never do that. 3 points in a home game against a mid table team is almost 100% guaranteed for them.

At the moment Zidane's policy to change the line up all the time is hurting us.

Hardly anyone mentions it but... at this rate we will get overtaken by Barcelona in league titles count. Our forward options are crap while Barcelona has had peeps like Henry, Etoo, Ronaldinho, Messi, Suarez, Villa, Neymar over the last 10 or so years. Fuck this.

All those league titles that Barça won are completely deserved and Madrid have nobody but themselves to blame.

And it's not like Barça has been unplayable the entire decade. No, there were times when we had fair chances to win it but ended up blowing all of them.

You can't get mad when your rival overtakes you if you spend an entire decade sleeping.

The Madrid One wrote:Hardly anyone mentions it but... at this rate we will get overtaken by Barcelona in league titles count. Our forward options are crap while Barcelona has had peeps like Henry, Etoo, Ronaldinho, Messi, Suarez, Villa, Neymar over the last 10 or so years. Fuck this.

I agree with DoC, Barca's league wins have been deserved and it's not only because they had so much quality, but their form in the league hasn't fluctuated as much as ours. They've also hardly suffered any injuries for all this time despite having such a thin squad, which is almost a bit hard to believe. I don't think our forward options have been a problem in the past. We've had some rather mediocre midfielders at times, and we've had our fair share of defensive issues. The likes of Albiol, Garay, Granero and illaramendi come to mind. Even Pepe and Ramos have disappointed me multiple times earlier in their careers.

Who's been our worst forwards? Higuaín? Morata? Pedro Leon? Callejon? As much as some people may not rate their talent, they certainly had positive impacts on our league results, either as starters or rotational players. No one will complain that we sold Morata to Chelsea, but his contributions off the bench were absolutely crucial to our last league win, although our actual league performances from the first half of that season still give me nightmares. I don't think we were great in the league that season, but our performances were consistently sufficient, and that's something I more typically associate with Barca, who tend to win even when every single one of their players looks hungover.

Inconsistent players + error-prone players + age = hard to win the league.

Ramos and Marcelo were ALWAYS inconsistent. They had big game performances that's what their rep is based on. Same with Benzema.

Bale, Modric and Casemiro (until this year) have been injry prone.

We basically haven't had Hazard at all and Jovic is a flop this season.

In short, we're not built to win leagues. We're a cup team.

To be fair, Barca has Messi. imagine if Messi played for us in last 10 years. we would have at least 8 league titles.