Next Saturday, 14th of February 2015, a greatly fragilized Real Madrid will entertained a highly moralized Deportivo La Coruña at the mythical Santiago Bernabéu for round 23 of the Spanish Liga BBVA, on a match that Los Blancos need to win because they cannot allow any more slipups if they want to keep their closest title opponents at bay.

An afternoon to forget. This is how one can describe Real Madrid’s performance at Vicente Calderón last Saturday. Los Blancos were severely hammered 4-0 by their neighbours and eternal rivals of Atlético Madrid on a match where they did not even dare to disturbed a confident Colchoneros’ team. The current Spanish champions produced an excellent display of power and almost ridiculized a Real Madrid that failed once again to work as a team and that ended up by collecting their fourth defeat of the season. The return of Cristiano Ronaldo after the two match suspension was not enough to inspire a team that seemed to be on a free falling spiral on their last two matches. In the middle of the week, Real Madrid managed to overcome Sevilla by 2-1 at Santiago Bernabéu but they were strangely pushed against the ropes by the Andalusia team, especially in the first 25-30 minutes of the match. The Sevillistas had, in fact, more goal attempts than the current World and European champions and they it is fair to say that they deserved a bit more than a sour 2-1 defeat.

The midweek was nevertheless a prelude to what would later happen at Vicente Calderón last Saturday, where Real Madrid, although deprived from some important players of the defensive sector, made a complete fool of themselves.

For the upcoming home clash against Deportivo La Coruña, Real’s manager Carlo Ancelotti will probably still not be able to rely on the contribution of Pepe, Sergio Ramos, James Rodríguez and Luka Modric, all of them sidelined due to injury.

As for Depor, the Galician team is probably going through their best moment of the season so far as they are on an excellent three match row without defeats. Last Friday night, Deportivo overcame the surprising Eibar at Riazor by 2-0 thus sealing their second win in a row after their excellent victory at Vallecas against Rayo two weeks ago.

Depor have a very faint chance of getting something positive out of their trip to Bernabéu next Saturday, especially if we have in mind what happened at Riazor back in September, when Los Blancos hammered them by 8-2, but they will certainly try to take advantage of Real’s less impressive recent moment.

Real Madrid

Stats: W-4 L-1 D-0

Recent Form - LWWWW

Deportivo La Coruña

Stats: W-2 L-1 D-2

Recent Form - WWDLD

Possible Line-ups

Real Madrid (4-3-3) - Casillas - Carvajal - Varane - Nacho - Marcelo - Khedira - Kroos - Ronaldo - Isco - Bale - Benzema

Deportivo La Coruña (4-2-3-1) - Fabri - Juanfran - Lopo - Insua - Luisinho - Bergantinos - Medunjanin - Perez - Cavaleiro - Cuenca - Riera

Prediction

Real Madrid 3 Deportivo La Coruña 1