Craig Burley

about who's not doing it about who needs to pull the finger out about who may be hiding a little bit under the pressure and not wanting the ball because that happens you know some players can make it difficult for you this sounds strange you know but some players can make it difficult for you to find them with a pass if they're having a hard time we call it hiding in the game and it goes on and it happens i've seen it particularly when big crowds turned on players

And what we have here is a culmination of a lot of things at Real Madrid that can be dispelled somewhat at the weekend when they play, I think it's Raya Vallecano, in the early kick-off on Sunday.

But certainly off the back of the chat with Xabi Alonso, off the back with the supposed dressing room unrest with Xabi Alonso, we kind of at least thought that part of it was gone.

The fact that he was the blame game

So we kind of thought, well, that part's gone.

Now we can get on with just the football and the togetherness and the rolling the sleeves up.

Well, it seems not.

It seems that when bad results occur and midweek was a bad result, the blame game is alive and well at the Bernabeu.

And Xabi Alonso's not around.

No, he's sitting back loving it.

His stock is going up with every game.

You remember when it unravelled for Xavi at Barcelona?

As it was starting to unravel after a successful season where they won La Liga.

And part of that was dressing room unrest.

Part of that was the blame game.

Remember the problems with Lewandowski and Xavi.

Remember Ilkay Gundogan coming out after, I think it was the first classical of the season, and talking about players, particularly youngsters, not showing enough emotion after the game.

blaming Ronald Arojo in Paris for a bad challenge in a red car publicly, and in all fairness to him, he did name him, which these guys haven't named anybody, but he named Ronald Arojo, and it really was pushing the dressing room to cracking and creaking point, and it did.

It did, and he lost his job, and it just feels a little bit... It doesn't quite feel like that, but when you start throwing...

your teammates under the bus, and you've not, as Nathan said, if you've not addressed it in the dressing room, because if that was me, I'd be annoyed.