Bouncing back?

After a trouncing by the hands of Barca last Monday (man, it still hurts....), RM bounced back to a 2-0 victory against Valencia on Saturday - and for that, I'm very relieved. Unfortunately, I had to miss the match but got quite worried reading the minute-by-minute commentary and post match response online. But after watching the game yesterday, I have to say it was a job well done (and no, as much as I love the team, I'm not being biased here!). Lots of complaints about the match being boring, etc, etc - but I thought it was a good match. Valencia is a very good team (Soldado's shooting was surprisingly off though, but their younger players Juan Mata and Jordi Alba were pretty sharp!) - and I'm more worried about MU tomorrow, in fact. Anywayz, I quite enjoyed watching it -and most importantly, we won. =)

We started out a bit "unconfidently" (I'm sure the horrors of Monday was still haunting the players at the back of their minds), but we became better as we played on. In terms of formation, we switched to a 4-3-3 at the beginning of the match. The formation was close to what I predicted in my previous post except that Ozil was "centre" instead of left. Pipita was sorely missed though =(. Overall, I thought this new look worked pretty well. My one line review of each player..

• Khedira had a more forward role (prob Mou has asked him to become more box-to-box since there isn't a front man) BUT he missed a few chances (sheesh...). I also don't know why I've never been impressed with this guy (even during WC10), but I sure hope he is more useful than what I perceive him to be!
• I thought Xabi was quite invisible throughout the game though and by now, I think most teams have figured out how to stop us in our attack (i.e., suffocate Xabi). We probably need to think of solutions to this problem.
• I guess that's why Lass was called into the game - he is one hell of a destroyer - he can't pass, can't shoot, can't dribble - but boy, he is damn good at harassing the opposition and winning the ball back!
• Marcelo was back to his normal self - very quick, fantastic dribbler and his passing was not bad too! Unfortunately he's not good in front of the goal, he always tends to lose the ball the moment he arrives in the penalty box.
• Pepe/Albiol - this was an OK combo but Albiol could have been a bit quicker though.
• Arbeloa - this dude is definitely better than Ramos when it comes to defending, and he showed that he was quite decent coming forward as well (albeit not as daring as Ramos but yeah, we all know Ramos can't defend. Lol!)
• Di Maria - the more I see him play, the more I like him (I didn't like him at the beginning of the season). He's lightning quick and his passes are pretty damn accurate. The only problem with this guy is that whenever he gets into the penalty box, he gets into this "tunnel vision" mode and doesn't seem to see any other player IN the box! But I'm sure he'll only get better - he's also much less selfish now =). I thought he had a decent game despite reading lots of flak (?) about him in this game - I didn't think he was bad at all!
• O.Ozil - a good game from him despite being tightly marked. He could have provided a few more assists on Saturday if only the goals had gone in! His one touch passes are amazing to watch.... :D Anyway, he provided the first assist to our first goal via a brilliant pass to CR7, who nailed the ball in from the left.
• CR7 - brilliant as always - the main threat throughout the whole game. His second was really funny - basically Lass won the ball back and passed to him, then CR7 made the run towards the penalty box, expecting to pass it back to Lass (or something) but Lass didn't seem to want to touch the ball (strange bloke?!?) so he went solo (faking, driblling, bla bla) past 2 defenders and the goalie! I don't think he even expected to "beat" these 3 defenders that easily! Maybe the Valencia defence were already tired out by then, especially given that they had 10 men only.
• Benz - not very useful, and missed a sitter towards the end of the match
• Granero - not very useful - he's usually much better when he plays from the beginning. But then, what could he have done in the 14 mins that he had? (He came in for Ozil). He did, however, pick up a yellow card around 10 seconds after he got on the pitch. Bad Pirata!
• M. Diarra - came in for Di Maria in the last 8 mins. No comment really...

Valencia had many chances to equalise, but thankfully didn't manage to convert their chances well enough. Even after they went down to 10 men, they were still looking for the winning goal (salute!). The game became much more open after Mou subbed off Khedira for Benzema and we reverted back to 4-2-3-1. As I've said, I'm a bit worried about MU tomorrow....

So that's my 2 cents worth of the match. Next up is Auxerre so we'll probably field a very unfamiliar starting line up (or experiment some new formations?). Not sure if the Valencia match was enough to make us "regain" some confidence but I don't think we would have managed to get out of this mess if we had lost the match. The loss of Pipita will hurt us eventually...Sigh.

The other match that happened over the weekend was the Bayern one. Gosh, I really want to punch Mario Gomez. He is one of the worst forwards I've ever seen (i.e., he needs 50 chances to convert 1 =.="). Bayern started brilliantly in the first half, but ended in a disaster in the 2nd when our defence was completely exposed. I blame our lack of urgency in the first half and our failure to convert our chances - but Neuer was amazing though. He saved quite a few shots and I would have voted him MoTM. I wish he was in Bayern. Anyway, with this loss, I can safely say that all we should aim for is top 3 so that we can have a shot at qualifying for UCL next year. It's so sad to see them play like this given that they have brilliant players. But kudos to Schalke - the boy that was marking Ribery - Uchida did a great job at stopping him from doing his thing.

Other footie action happening this week. 2 dead rubber games by Bayern and RM (I think on Weds - I'll need to catch it after the game since I'll be at a concert) and MU tomorrow!!!!!

In the mean time, I think I'll need to "revise" the Interpol setlist before I see them tonight - can't wait!

*Listening to Rest My Chemistry by Interpol*