Alex Kirkland

Yeah, it's the worst possible start for Abeloa.

This defeat isn't on him.

It's not entirely his fault.

He literally took over yesterday, took his first training session yesterday, had his first press conference yesterday.

But he was saying in his press conference just now, he tried to take responsibility.

He said, this is on me.

I'm the coach.

I pick the squad.

I pick the team.

I make the decisions.

But watching the team tonight, they still look like the same.

Real Madrid team, of course, it's been no time at all for Arbeloa to kind of get his ideas across or really make any changes.

And so there were sort of familiar flaws for this Real Madrid team tonight in terms of no real clear idea of how they want to play, difficulty creating chances, dodgy at the back as well.

The one thing I think you can lay on Arbeloa, and again, he took responsibility for this in his press conference just now, is the team selection.

They left out a number of players, a number of big names for one reason or another, some minor knocks and injuries.

This was a team without Mbappé and Bellingham and Rodrigo and Courtois and No Carreras.

Other players were injured like Militao, Antonio Rudiger.

Arbeloa brought in some youngsters from the reserve team, Castilla, who he's been coaching and he knows well.

Some of them did okay.

Others not so much.