Next Saturday, 24th of January 2015, the league leaders, Real Madrid, will travel to Andalusia to face a rejuvenated Córdoba at Estadio Nuevo Arcángel for round 20 of the Spanish Liga BBVA, on a match that Los Blancos need to win in order to preserve their point advantage over their closest contenders at the top of the table.

Real Madrid are still licking the wounds after their somewhat premature elimination from Copa del Rey at the expenses of the neighbours and rivals of Atlético last week. Los Blancos weren’t strong enough to cope with Atlético’s strong will and ended up by being defeated and not winning any of two 1/8 finals matches. Despite such setback, Real Madrid managed to lift their heads once again and returned to wins last weekend when they visited Getafe at Coliseum Alfonso Perez. Los Blancos won the match by 3-0 thanks to another almost vintage performance from both Cristiano Ronaldo and James Rodriguez. The magical duo was enough to “destroy” Getafe’s leaky defence line, which was unable to sustain Real’s attacking avalanche throughout almost the entire match.

After Real’s two consecutive defeats against Valencia and Atlético early this year, some questions began to surface concerning the team’s less impressive moment and on how such defeats would affect the team’s future performances. It is fair to say that Real Madrid does not look as strong as they were, for example, one or two months ago, but it is still a bit premature to talk about an hypothetical crisis, just because the team has lost two matches and because they were eliminated from Copa del Rey.

The upcoming clash against Córdobamight could prove to be a good test for Real, especially if we take a look at what the Andalusian side has done on recent matches. For that clash, Carlo Ancelotti will still not be able to rely on the services of Luka Modric, who remains sidelined because of injury, and he is not yet certain if the Portuguese defender Pepe will recover in time for next Saturday’s match.

As for Córdoba, Los Califas are proving to be a completely different team after the arrival of Miroslav Djukic at the helm of the team. The Serbian head coach was a breath of fresh air for the Andalusian side as he managed to improve every aspect of the team’s game.

Córdoba have only been defeated once in the last seven matches (a heavy 5-0 defeat at Camp Nou against Barcelona) and, thanks to their recent good results, they have managed to escape from the terrifying relegation zone.

Real Madrid are firm favourites for the upcoming match at Nuevo Arcángel, but they will certainly need to dig deep in order to clinch the three points against a very organized opponent that does not throw in the towel very easily.

Córdoba

Stats: W-2 L-1 D-2

Recent Form - DWWLD

Real Madrid

Stats: W-2 L-2 D-1

Recent Form - WDWLL

Possible Line-ups

Córdoba (4-2-3-1) - J. Carlos - Pantic - Edimar - López - Crespo - Deivid - Rossi - Cartabia - Bebe - Ghilas - Andone

Real Madrid (4-4-2) - Casillas - Carvajal - Varane - Sergio Ramos - Marcelo - James - Kroos - Isco - Ronaldo - Bale - Benzema

Prediction

Córdoba 1 Real Madrid 2