As some of my more regular readers (nobody) may know, my expertise, football wise, stretches far beyond the great Arsenal Football Club.  Indeed, the most viewed post I have written was about jurisdiction in football.  In fact, if you were to type 'jurisdiction in football' into Google you would find my post.  So I thought I would write less about Arsenal and more about Real Madrid (today only).  When a mate was over at my house we decided that Real Madrid were being stupid and buying too many players.  So we drew up their best team.

                           4-4-2 formation

                           Casillas

Ramos       Pepe              Heinze           Marcelo

                           Gago

Ronaldo                                              Robben

                             Kaka

             Raul                        Benzema

Complaints? I didn't think so.  So who are we leaving out

Lass Diarra, signed for £20 Million 7 months ago
Gonzalo Higuain, £12 Million 3 1/2 years ago
Daniel Parejo Munoz signed for £18 Million 7 months ago
Guti, vice captain, played over 350 games for Real Madrid
Metzelder, signed on a free, possibly gone to Besiktas, still not sure
Raul Abidol, new man, replaces Heinze?  £13 Million this window
Miguel Torres, played 14 games last season
Javi Garcia, 15 games after being signed for £3 Million
Mahamadou Diarra, signed 3 years ago for £22 Million

This is only those who aren't Dutch.  You see, in the past few years Real Madrid have gone Dutch.  They signed Sneijder £23m, Robben £24m,  Drenthe £12m, Huntelaar £23m (this is particularily disappointing for The Sun because whenever he scored they would scream 'PURE KLAAS' I would've loved to read that), van der Vaart £13m, and Ruud van Nistelrooy £15m because Fergie hated him.  6 Dutch players, 8 Spainiards on this team.  Arsenal sign Frenchmen, Liverpool sign Spainiards, Real Madrid sign Dutch.  They have a bigger Dutch fascination than Australia.

My point?  Real Madrid are spending too much, on too many.  They pay money for players, who are their assets.  But because they have too many assets they will not be able to get the most value out of their assets.  So I come to a conclusion, they are buying players for marketting alone.  Not much of a shock after Beckham but that is irellevant.  I have so far stopped short of saying G*l*c**c*s.  But Real Madrid will not do well in the League or Champion's League.  Their Midfield has totally changed, save Gago and Robben, Ronaldo comes from a counter attacking side, Kaka comes from a defensive side, Raul has played with Madrid for years, so when two players come in and want the team built around themselves he is going to have to adapt to two players playing different styles, Benzema is going to have to get into a style a long way from the small town of the French Ligue 1.

So, lets put everything together.  The Dutch players have been pushed out, great players who deserve playing time, which is difficult because if they played together they could work very well because they have been taught under the same people, they are buying and not selling, thus lowering the return they will get from their assets, and they are buying players that will expect (due to their fee) that the team will be based around them, players who have different styles of play that will eventually confuse and complicate Madrid and unsettle the team.

In other news, the Arsenal are boring boring, the press are too interested with Madrid to worry about Arsenal.

Best, Goon