Today he was making runs but the finishing was woefully lacking. His PR must be working overtime for him to be collecting all these MOTMs.
If he was as selfish as some people say, he wouldn't have asked Jude to take the first PK. He knew he wasn't confident and, for the team, it was better for Jude to take it. Same with the PK when up 2-0 that was overturned by VAR. He had already scored a goal and Rodrygo hadn't... so he asked Rodrygo if he'd like to take it. To start the season, he had both physical and mental issues... his physical issues are gone now as we see that enough of his speed is back. Also, he's still making good runs at the late stages of game. Much better timing with his teammates too. The issue is confidence now... just needs to keep at it until his finishing gets sharp again. Unless he falls back into bad habits, it will come no doubt. Other than Messi and CR7 (although CR's last season at Man U wasn't all that great), every great player has struggled at some point. In terms of CFs... RVN had a poor one at Man U, Lewa was written off last season, Del Piero actually played meh for 3 years in his 20s. Ibrahimovic had a poor 2nd year at Juventus. Thierry Henry's 2nd season at Arsenal was meh. Etc. It happens to all of them. Most times, it lasts all season, unfortunately. I don't think it will last all year with Mbappe. He needs to not hesitate and doubt... you see anxiety in everything he does, which he's never had to deal with in the past.
Despite his struggles, Mbappe has scored 10 goals and will probably be at 25-30 by end of this season. That’s if he doesn’t improve. I’m hoping he will turn it around like Courtois did in his first season .
Im sure he will go above 30 goals this season if he stays healthy.I expect him to improve a lot in second part of season
I believe the tone would be very different if he hadn't scored before making those misses. The forum would also would be singing a different tune had he not scored before the misses.
We're 1 pt behind with 1 game in hand... even if we draw Valencia, we're tied for top of La Liga. Given the rest of our CL schedule, we'll make it 99%. So with all this negative talk, we're gonna go into the 2nd half of the season in pretty damn good shape unless we have another accident before the end of 2024.
Courtois was getting destroyed by everyone until February. Heck, Bale was horrible too until the 2nd half of his first season (kept running out of bounds for no reason lol). Modric was shit too.
Iirc Ronaldo got some whistles and boo’s for moaning in the press about being unhappy. My memory might be failing me. But don’t think it was ever about his performances on the field.
My memory is that he was getting booed for poor performance/effort, complained about the booing to the press, and predictably that made the booing worse. Ronaldo was an entirely different situation though, being at the end of his career and not showing effort. Mbappe is fine in the effort department. Until Ancelotti says something about our striker(s) not pressing enough, I am assuming he is telling Mbappe to conserve his energy for attacking, like CR7 and Messi did.
No hes not. And when the Bernabeu did boo other players in the past due to perceived lack of effort, they were not waiting for the coach to give them the green light by saying something about those players not pressing enough. My guess is its a combination of them taking it easy because its his first days, and the fact that indeed the audience changed since then, with younger and more casual fans replacing the older ones that were more hardcore.
It happened multiple times, bayern munich game in CL first half he got whistles for some bad shots and then scored a hatrick in second half which shut people up. The booing actually worked for someone like ronaldo tho because that only pissed him off and wanted to shut people up.
He was getting boohed because he was publically whining about a new contract whenever Messi got one. Muy triste, people don't like me here, the works. We've BEEN here. Every time he put pen to paper his attitude switched completely.
I would say not to worry about that. Xabi Alonso is a proven winner in 3 leagues. He knows Real Madrid through and through. He'd be able to deal with the pressure and with primadonna players. Xabi maybe wasn't a captain, but he was very influential in our team. He was the only guy screaming at Ronaldo to track back and help in defense. Nobody else dared to do that. He didn't give a fk about who you are. The lack of experience could be a problem, but I wouldn't hate it at all if he got the job. In saying that, I am not thinking Carlo should leave just yet, and I respect him. We'll see how the season pans out. That is a myth. Mbappe has nothing to do with us not going for Haaland. Haaland's dad came out himself to say that the offer was on the table but the reason why they didn't sign with us was Banzema just coming off of a ballon d'Or season. They knew we couldn't suddenly bench Benzema and play Haaland. Haaland did the right thing for his career in a way. He joined a club where his father played, and was a guaranteed starter, won CL and Premier league and broke all scoring records. If his body doesn't get destroyed in EPL he might still join us some day. Not if you're Jose Mourinho. Remember how we got rid of Valdano for him. Heinze had great hair tho
Heinze was atrocious. We've had a lof bad ones. Altintop and Lass were used as right fullbacks before Carvajal took over lol. Coentrao should have been much better than what he turned out to be. Just lacked brain cells even for a footballer. I'm still very bitter that Real Madrid let both Ashraf Hakimi and Theo Hernandez go without a buyback. Really am. That was a dream pairing. Don't really need creative CMs with those two.
Agreed. But we should have kept a buyback... We used to always do that. That's how we got Carvajal back for example. Same for Morata. The fee ends up being less as a result but we didn't get a lot for Theo and Ashraf (in the grand scheme of things) to begin with. I'd got buy Theo now too btw if the Alphonso Davies deal doesn't happen. Davies was just caught today by police in Germany for drunk driving.
Who? Mendy? Not Fran i hope because he is frankly a very meh fullback. He's neither good defensively nor offensively. Mendy only works if you have creators in the midfield... which Real Madrid does not. Mendy is very solid defensively but a complete black hole on offense. In modern football, the attacking prowess of fullbacks is extremely important. Just look at Liverpool, Man City (normally), Bayern, etc. It's very hard to attack the middle of the pitch given today's athleticism without having wide threats. You have to create gaps by stretching the pitch horizontally.
We had a buy-back type deal on Hakimi, as he was loaned for two years to Dortmund I believe. In fact, we brought him back and sold him (during covid) for a substantial fee. No way was Inter going to accept a buy-back while paying such a high fee for a young full-back. I think it's good to just accept that we rated Hakimi extremely highly, but had a massive player at right back in Carvajal and had to balance the books a bit. It happens; Hakimi wouldn't have been happy to play the squad role and rightfully so. With Theo, well...I think that subject has been discussed many times before, but you probably weren't following the club back then. And, tbh...I'm quite happy with how Mendy generally performed since his arrival, even though I have reservations in terms of his on the ball play, his injury record and his massive dip in form two years ago. But we won a few CLs, in part due to his exceptional defensive performances. And like always with this stuff. We inspect our players' performances with a microscope looking for mistakes (which will always happen), while looking at other team's players general performances and immediately go 'we have to get him!'. We'll be fine.