Three takeaways from Real Madrid’s 1-0 win vs. Rayo Vallecano

Real Madrid recorded another narrow 1-0 league win over Rayo Vallecano on Saturday. Here are three takeaways from the match.

This game was very dull

Off a hammering against CSKA Moscow in the Champions League (there is a sentence I never thought I’d write) one might have looked at Rayo Vallecano and thought it would be a much more straightforward encounter than the last home match.

The visitors haven’t gotten a point at the Bernabéu since 2000. In that time, they’ve conceded 28 goals in the last five visits and their backline is still suffering from the devastating aftereffects of having Paco Jemez as their coach and they were without their best attacker, Real Madrid loanee Raul De Tomas.

Everything pointed to a stroll for the home team and when Karim Benzema opened the scoring in the first 10 minutes, it seemed like that’s what we were in for.

Sadly, instead of scoring a half a dozen and dusting themselves off from the horror show of their previous match, Madrid sleepwalked through the next of 80 minutes of the match and were it not for the late heroics of Thibaut Courtois, they would have come away with much less than three points, does this script sound familiar to you?

Whether this was the team on the pitch never getting out of 11th gear or a systematic issue, it’s hard to tell, with context one might favor the latter.

Too often, Real Madrid’s front three waltzes into the opponents half and look clueless. Marcelo recently has looked more like a defensive liability than an offensive asset and when a creative player like the Brazilian begins to look flat, one must feel that a larger issue is at play than poor form.

Against the league’s two worst defenses, Real Madrid has scored two goals, highlighting an offensive issue this team has been suffering fomr most of the season, but under Solari, the problem seems to be getting worst, not better.