MrExcalibur100

Real Madrid fans brandishing Nazi flags and burning Barcelona jerseys. All over twitter. Shocking, vile, disgusting club.

Ridiculous celebration from Ronaldo.

Gareth FAIL!!!!!

Bale is so poor in this game.

Koke's deliveries are wicked! Causing Madrid all sorts of problems.

Atleti are jammy bastards

Horrible keeping from Casillas. Iker! Iker! Iker! Now you see why Jose benched you? Crybaby.

Whatta MISS!!! From Bale!

I'm sure they charged him a shit ton of money for it too.

Grade 1 hamstrings mean 2 weeks, 3 weeks max.

It was so predictable. Idiotic management from Atletico. You can't just magically recover from a hamstring.

Very poor management if you ask me. Risking a player like that just to play one game when he has his entire career ahead of him. At least now he can recover fully before the world cup.

I just hope no one pulls anything or gets hurt in the opening stages.

Real Madrid: Iker, Varane, Ramos, Coentrao, Carvajal, Modric, DiMaria, Asier, Ronaldo, Benzema, Bale Atletico: Courtois; Juanfran, Godin, Miranda, Filipe Luis; Gabi, Tiago, Koke, Raul Garcia; Villa, Diego Costa So, no Pepe, so Varane starts. Huge game for him. Also, no Turan for Atletico. Costa starts (stay safe and don't get injured!)

Simeone probably doesn't use him there because in a 4-4-2, he maybe thinks it's not solid enough to play him there, or that his creative quality will be more telling playing as an inverted winger,(sort of how Barca play Iniesta on the left wing sometimes) or that Gabi and Tiago are just fantastic players and are not as versatile as Koke so have to play there. Who knows. As for being better, I dunno. The way he plays sometimes, it's basically like a CM and AM on the wing. If we buy him, I'm sure he will play next to Matic though. And if Oscar starts to mess up, we just put Koke there as an AM. Same thing applies to Willian. Koke on RW.

Apart from the fact that Koke has played as a central midfielder many times in his career for Atletico, like Joker10 said. In reality, that's his actual position but Simeone uses him on the left because of Tiago and Gabi. Oscar from what I know has never played there before and should not. I think the only time he's started at central midfield for us was away to Leeds? When Benitez tried it. But that was a 3 man midfield, anyway, not a 4-2-3-1.

Let's just hope he comes through this one unblemished. He's starting.

tbf, Rakitic has played quite a few games as a classic central midfielder for Sevilla in a 2 man midfield. Like Modric or Kroos, he can play these two positions quite well.

Amazing how Steve McClaren was once the England manager. Probably "saving" Bamford for extra time.

It's the blight of English football. The managers are even more mediocre and overrated than the players.

QPR (eh) have scored in the last few mins and will be back in the PL. McClaren is completely clueless for leaving Bamford on the bench against a team down to ten men, Horrible manager. I hope we loan Bamford to a PL side though next season.

How true is the story of him signing a new contract? It's not yet official and no major paper is reporting it.

Personally, Koke will be my first choice even over Pogba who is my second. An absolute pearl of a midfielder. A managers wet-dream. Power, technique, killer passes, can play in the pivot as a holder or a DLP, left wing, right wing and a number 10! Just a beast and an amazing tactical option. Has a wicked set-piece delivery too, something this current crop of players amazingly seem to lack. I won't want to be that club that severely weakens them though. But we should also throw 40-50 million at him and see what Atletico says.