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With the last second draw against Valencia still fresh on everyone's minds, it'll be up to the players to move on from it as a quick turnaround pits them against a bottom-of-the-barrel Valladolid side. All indications point to a Real Madrid win, but the again, those same indications pointed to a win this past weekend and look how that turned out.
To put it bluntly, Valladolid is a pretty bad team. The first meeting between the two sides this season ended in a 4-0 drubbing in favor of Real Madrid with Gareth Bale picking up a hattrick. Based on the season's performance, we might be seeing a similar scoreline yet again.
Real Madrid might be fielding as many as six different starters in this game as compared to the Valencia with team captain Iker Casillas getting the starting nod in between the pipes. However, he probably won't be tested much as Valladolid's offense is truly putrid on so many levels. Javi Guerra is having a quietly decent season with 13 goals to his name, but the next highest scorer on their team has only netted three. To make things worse, striker Manucho might miss the game due to injury and midfielder Fausto Rossi will miss it due to yellow card accumulation.
As a team, they average the second fewest shots per game and the fewest on target in the entire league. They have 10 set piece goals as they're pretty good in the air so the back line and Iker will have to stay on their toes given that they conceded a howler against Valencia due to a corner kick and Valladolid will surely look to capitalize on this strength. The problem Valladolid face is that they simply cannot get out of their own half. They're poor in possession and when they do have the ball they can't make their possession count. They like to spread the field out wide and bomb the ball forward but if they over-commit they'll be susceptible to Madrid's counter-attack, something which is a strength of Madrid but a weakness for Valladolid. Defensively there's nothing to speak of as they're near the bottom in almost every defensive category.
Valladolid is right on the edge of relegation so they'll be content with a single point as that'll push them into the safety zone for the time being, but given their form this season and only having one real scoring threat, it's hard to see even Madrid's second-string players not coming through with a victory even though Valladolid managed to beat Barca by a score of 1-0 a few weeks ago. It's possible that they'll present a challenge as they'll give it their all to stay in the Primera but I don't see them having a great deal of success.
Prediction: 3-0 Real Madrid victory. Even with no Gareth Bale and Dani Carvajal, the partnership of Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema should be enough to bag the three points Real Madrid desperately needs in the home stretch of the league race.