Real Madrid 1-0 Racing Santander - La Liga Round 22

Real Madrid continued their great form as they beat Racing Santander 1-0 thanks to a lone goal from Gonzalo Higuain who now has 13 league goals.

And yet another record was broken. Iker Casillas played his 454th match with Real to equal Madrid legend and goalkeeper Paco Buyo but he is still far from being the player with the most matches in the white shirt.

New signing Julien Faubert made his debut but failed to impress. As Juande said, it is too early to make judgments but if the French midfielder wants to stay longer then he has to work harder.

First Half

Juande started with Casillas, Ramos, Pepe, Cannavaro, Heinze, Lass, Robben, Van der vaart, Sneijder, Higuain and Rau'l.

Our defense has improved dramatically since Juande took over the team. Believe it or not, we are the least scored upon team in the league so far in 2009, conceding only one goal in our last seven matches.

This a pretty important stat. Not only have we won seven straight matches but also maintained a clean-sheet in six games. We've only conceded one goal. Before Juande came in, we had been averaging one goal in each match although to say the truth Schuster had many defenders injured.

Lass, Sneijder and Van der vaart all played in the midfield. However, it was Lass who did all the dirty work of recovering and distributing the ball. Fernando Gago was clearly missed, but the Frenchman doubled his efforts and is proving everyday that he is capable of being the coach's first and best choice.

Arjen Robben who hadn't trained in the week before the match made some good runs through the wings but Rau'l, Higuain and Van der vaart all failed to convert his passes into goals.

Rau'l: one more goal to become Real's all time top-goal-scorer

Real Madrid Vs Racing Santander - La Liga Round 22 | 07/02/2009 - 20:00 CET | Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid.

What is interesting is that since Ramos took over as our head coach, we haven't had many injuries (touch wood!) and this supports the notion that Schuster and his physical trainer, were, somehow, doing something shady.

We've pretty much recovered most of our injured players save for those who have long-term injuries (De La Red, Diarra and Van Nistelrooy) and this has improved our performances tremendously.

The good news today is that Arjen Robben started to train with the team normally as he seemingly recovered from the flu. In the last couple of days he had to stay home or just workout in the gym, however, the Dutch winger is reportedly fit and should be able to play tomorrow.

Racing Santander

Racing is a team that I respect a lot. They have also proved to be a difficult opponent, but we have always had the edge. This time they visit us hoping to snatch at least a draw in order to keep their hopes of qualifying for the UEFA Cup alive as they stumbled against Barcelona last weekend.

They currently sit tenth on the table with 28 points. A win wouldn't magically guarantee them them a place in the UEFA but would push them to the ninth or eighth place if At.Bilbao and Malaga failed to win their respective matches.

Here are their recent results:

Recent Matches

• Feb 1  Racing 1-2 Barcelona
• Jan 25 Sevilla 0-2 Racing
• Jan 18 Getafe 0-1 Racing
• Jan 14 Valencia 3-1 Racing
• Jan 11 Racing 1-1 Recreativo
• Jan 7  Racing 1- Valencia
• Jan 4  Real Valladolid 0-1 Racing

With what we could call an improved performance, Real Madrid beat Racing Santander 2-0 to snatch another three points making the total six points from two wins and one defeat.

Bernd Schuster, however, used a new lineup this time. There weren't any surprises in the backline as Casillas, Ramos, Pepe, Cannavaro and Heinze all started. However, the midfield was quite different.

Schuster started with Diarra, Guti and De La Red at the same time. This gave the team more power in the midfield and allowed them to dominate the match. However, the problem was on...

Do you know that watching football is pretty much difficult these days? I mean, for every single competition in which your team plays, you need to chase a certain channel, feed, website or anything else just to watch your team and at the end of the day, you end up not watching anything (maybe Grounded For Life, ER or That 70's Show in my case?)

This...