i'm not trying to defend benitez but if you look at our table after 7 games last year then we had 15 points as well, we had a rough start too and then everything was going great for us until the injuries. great results take time especially with a new coach, look at how barcelona was doing last year, so we could still go on to win many things if people will be a little more patient with our team right now.
I can’t believe y’all are still coming at me with this, but ok.
Last year, 2 key players left us, Xabi Alonso & Angel Di Maria. Last year we also purchased two key players, James & Toni, who needed time to adjust. Last year, we had the world cup which exhausted our players both mentally and physically and they had a lot less time to recover than they did this year. Last year, we lost the second and the third games, after which we went on an epic 22-game winning streak that only ended in January 2015.
This year, our squad is pretty much the same when it comes to key attacking players/playmakers and therefore, we don’t have the excuse that someone needed time to adjust. We have a new manager which could possibly explain why we drew against a newly promoted second division team in the first round, but frankly it was really embarrassing and really shouldn’t have happened. The second and the third matches went fine (and our opponents’ complete inability to play football had quite a lot to do with it) but then all of our problems became very apparent. We barely made it past Granada at home, we pretty much won on luck if you consider the fact that their goal should have been counted and ours was arguably offside, and Granada is a team that we easily beat (4-0 (A) and 9-0 (H)) last year. We failed to beat Malaga at home. Bilbao gave us a lot more trouble than they should have, considering the poor form that they’re in, they somehow managed to score one and forced us to go into overdrive, desperately trying to score another goal, which we eventually did. It was almost the same against Atletico, we scored, they scored, we tried to score again, we failed. You know what they say, once is a chance, twice is a coincidence & three times is a pattern. Our strategy for this season is to score one and then make sure we don’t concede, which has pretty much always backfired. It was painful to watch us play against Atletico because we were literally so content with that one goal, that B*nitez took off Benzema and put on defensive players and all we did was try to maintain the score, which failed and resulted in a draw. And I think it’s important to mention that Atletico is in a pretty bad shape right now (or at least they were in that match), they had severe finishing problems, a lower pass accuracy and weaker defense than last year, and yet we couldn’t use any of that to our advantage.
Last year, we didn’t have this terrible weak mentality, we suffered with injuries and Cristiano’s difficulties in February, which are the main reasons why things went downhill for us in 2015, but we fought hard in every game, always tried to score more goals, worked as a team, controlled possession, played beautifully, and had a brilliant united attacking force, things that just don’t exist this season. B*nitez has brought us to a point when none of us are really sure that we’re going to beat Levante at home, and I sincerely doubt that someone with that kind of mentality is capable of winning the treble.