Alex Kirkland

They love what he represents.

They think he sort of stands up for the club and its interests and has done so ever since his days as a player in the Mourinho team era.

So they love Arbeloa.

That is absolutely clear.

Well, looking at the club statement, the word interim does not appear.

He has been named as the new Real Madrid coach.

And so he's the coach.

We don't have details yet of that contract, but he is Real Madrid's new coach.

And let's see how long that lasts.

It's going to be fascinating.

He has no experience, of course, of coaching at the highest level.

As you say, he's been at the academy for the last five or six years, coaching Castilla, winning trophies with the youth teams.

But that's a very different ballgame to coaching at senior level.

Everybody talks about what

a kind of strong personality he is, how clear he is in his ideas of how he wants things to be done and how he wants to play, how outspoken he is.

He was outspoken as a player.

He has been as a coach as well.

I'm told by colleagues who've been in a lot of his press conferences with Castilla to buckle up, basically, because some of those presses are going to be

Pretty explosive, I think, with Arbeloa because he is not shy at all about giving his opinion and saying exactly what he thinks about whatever issue he's talking about.

But we just don't know in terms of how successful he's going to be.