Morning,

I am finally done with exams and this means more time dedicated to blogging. It has been a stressful couple of months and I can't wait for the summer to come to take my well-deserved vacation.

Anyway, Real managed to beat Malaga last night. I was very happy that Van der vaart was starting even though I didn't like the way Juande lined up his men. Lass couldn't play and so Gago was the only defensive midfielder. Van der vaart kind of played near Gago and did some good things but I thought it would have been better If he played as an attacking midfielder. He tried to score and was close on many occasions but it seems that this jinx of not scoring will continue. 

Metzelder also started...

If there is one thing I realized tonight then it was that our defense needs a "clean up". Yeah, you heard me, I don't give a damn if that means selling Heinze, Metzelder or even Ramos, we just need to stop making these stupid defensive mistakes.

We made a lot of mistakes tonight and costly mistakes. Both of Heinze and Marcelo were responsible for the first goal. How come an average player like Eliseu could beat both of them? That is beyond me.

And the second goal, oh Heinze again. I mean does this guy watch his matches? He is just constantly making mistakes. And then came Ramos who really pissed me off. He was deservedly sent-off. It was fair no question about that. Stepping on other player's chest is outrageous. I hope that the Spanish Federation will ban him for more than one match and even take more disciplinary action, I know that won't be good for us, but as I a soccer fan, I can't tolerate such a behavior.

Anyway, as for the lineup, well, Schuster started with Casillas in goal, Ramos, Cannavaro, Heinze and Marcelo in defense, Guti, Gago, Sneijder, Van Der Vaart and Drenthe in midfield, while Higuain in attack.

Frankly, I was surprised to see Rau'l on the bench. I thought that Schuster would still stick with him, but it seems that the German trainer had read one of my articles and understood that Rau'l should be benched.

Real Madrid vs Malaga | La Liga | 08/11/2008 - 20:00 CET | Santiago Bernabeu

We have lost three of our last five matches and Bernd Schuster thinks we are not on skid. Not only that but he also thinks that we played very well against Juventus but we lost because we were unlucky. He also said he wouldn't look at the score but rather at the performance in order to evaluate his team.

Frankly, he pisses me off. His news conferences are always boring and he says the same crap all the time.

I cannot judge a match on score alone. If I take a look at those matches without noticing the score,  I don't think we've hit any bumps in the road. I see mistakes, but we have played well. I know the final result is what matters, but I can take other positive elements from each. We've made mistakes in important matches; small mistakes that cost us dearly. Take Almeria for example. We had the game well under control, but we let it slip though our fingers.

So how come you think our performance was good and we made mistakes at the same time? A good performance is the one in which you play good football, make one, two or no mistakes and win. We didn't play good football, we made more than two mistakes and we didn't win - so where is that good performance, huh?