Real Madrid’s start to the season has been less than ideal and Julen Lopetegui is holding onto his job by a thread – but what needs sorting out for the Champions League holders to turn their fortunes around?
After losing to Levante at the weekend, Real sit seventh in La Liga having won only four of their opening nine league matches. Here, we take a look a look at the issues facing Lopetegui.
The problems at the back for Real are there for all to see; they are leaking goals and, at the same time, they have been without their attacking full-backs Dani Carvajal and Marcelo for part of the campaign, meaning Lopetegui has not been able to utilise his strongest back four on a regular basis.
Only Sergio Ramos has been a mainstay at the back, even the goalkeeper has changed, with summer signing Thibaut Courtois coming in after two games of the season to replace Keylor Navas, adding uncertainty to a team trying to adapt to their new head coach.
Raphael Varane has returned from winning the World Cup performing below his usual standards and his failure to get his confidence back has resulted in a number of mistakes, culminating in the Levante opener when he was unable to deal with a straight ball over the top, not to mention his handball to give away the penalty for the second.
Carvajal’s injury has caused the most problems with Lopetegui not fully trusting new boy Alvaro Odriozola to take his position and therefore selecting Nacho at right-back, with the central defender failing to offer the same dynamism to a team who rely on the attacking nature of their full-backs.
In the defeat to Levante it was Odriozola who was sacrificed at half-time in favour of Gareth Bale, a sign of how much faith Lopetegui has in the youngster.
The importance of Marcelo was shown against Levante as it was the Brazilian who got Real back into the game with his goal, the team’s first goal in 481 minutes of play.
When Marcelo has been absent Lopetegui has moved Nacho over to the left, having let Theo Hernandez depart for Real Sociedad on loan for the season, leaving him no like-for-like replacement.
Any new manager would need to create a cohesive defensive unit where replacements can slot in easily. Lopetegui has tried to implement a system which involves the defence playing much higher up and they are finding it hard to execute such a plan when they are chopping and changing players each week.
Real Madrid have notched just once in their last five games and a mere 13 times across nine league matches, despite averaging over 18 shots per game, a sign of their floundering in the final third.