Three takeaways as Real Madrid go top of La Liga
By Hasan Karim
For the first time in 100 days, Real Madrid return to the summit of LaLiga after a scrappy 1-0 win against Real Valladolid. With Real now unbeaten in 12 league games and three points clear, here are our three takeaways from the game.
Real are showing championship winning grit:
This game was not an easy one to watch for the spectator. It was rugged, it was rough and it was chaotic. Whilst there were some nice little moments from individuals, by and large this was not a great collective performance – some of that can be attributed to the midweek game, although, there is more context to the struggle.
Real do not have the best of times historically speaking when travelling to Estadio José Zorrilla. In the last 10 visits, they’ve won four, drawn four and lost twice. Alongside the hit and miss results, Real have not kept a clean sheet at this stadium since 2000!
Other questions were posed prior to this game, with the primary one being how will Real deal with games when Karim Benzema isn’t scoring – they’ve won their last three in a row and haven’t lost in six weeks, impressive when you consider the Frenchman has dwindled in recent weeks.
Whilst every spectator will naturally want free-flowing football, sometimes sides have to dig deep, roll their sleeves up and roll with the punches, Real has shown capability of doing both this season. This is even more impressive when fans consider that they have consistently spent large portions of this season without their gala XI all playing at the same time.