Monday 12 September 2016 21:15, UK
In his latest column, Guillem Balague discusses a new era for Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Enrique's mistakes in Barcelona's shock defeat by Deportivo Alaves, and Atletico Madrid's struggles to perform for a full 90 minutes.
Atletico and Real Madrid recorded comfortable wins over Celta Vigo and Osasuna respectively, while Barcelona lost 2-1 at home to Deportivo Alaves.
But what did we learn from the latest round of fixtures? Sky Sports' Spanish football expert Balague dissects the performances of last season's top three before answering YOUR questions...
Real Madrid didn't play well, but they don't need to play well to actually win games. They have so much power up front... Cristiano Ronaldo scored on his return, and he played 65 minutes. This is something new that we're going to see more often this season, where he will be rested or won't be allowed to play the full 90 minutes.
The reason being, of course, is that in the last three years he's finished the season really badly. Last season was the most successful of his career, and it will probably take him to the Ballon d'Or, but he was physically not at his best and [Zinedine] Zidane wants to avoid that again.
In my eyes, it's two superheroes talking to each other, and only superheroes have got the same language and understand each other. I don't think anybody else would have been able to tell him what to do.
We're seeing a new era in the Cristiano Ronaldo story, one where he listen to the coaches and realises the limits imposed by his body. As usual, he will come stronger from it, I am sure.
There were many reasons for Barcelona's defeat. One is that, unlike Real Madrid, the rotation was excessive. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course, but there were seven changes from their previous La Liga game, and two of the players who remained, Arda Turan and Javier Mascherano, were moved into different positions. Arda from the left of the attack to the right, and Mascherano from the left to the right of the centre-back pairing.
What was missing was a reference point, better use of space and better positioning, but what I've always feared of Luis Enrique is that he's not bothered too much about putting work towards making the team compact, about creating new ways of attacking, about focusing on controlling games, about positioning.
He prefers football that is more direct, which means Barcelona have less control and perhaps even less solutions when they are tactically surprised.
Sometimes, when you have so much power up front, some coaches think there is no point in working hard at other things, but when that power up front isn't working, it becomes more difficult.
Luis Suarez, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi were on the bench, and Neymar thought he had to sort everything out instead of staying wide. That was not corrected, the team did not offer many other solutions and for an hour Barcelona looked plain.
There was some self-criticism from Luis Enrique in the press conference by saying he hadn't prepared to attack the 541 that Alaves put on the pitch, but I think teams at that level should have layers to open up teams like Alaves, and have more answers when situations arise like that.
Barcelona will, of course, compete for everything, but it's disappointing a team of that stature should not have more collective answers.
Do they depend on Messi? He's the one everybody looks for, the structure of the team depends on him (especially now that he is playing deeper) and when he's not there, the team struggle to get players breaking lines of defence, or to look for alternatives if Neymar drives the ball too often and keeps coming inside.
I also need to mention Alaves. Mauricio Pellegrino had an idea of why Barcelona found it difficult to beat certain teams when he was a Barcelona player. He realised Claudio Ranieri used to play five at the back with Valencia, or 5-4-1, because if you stop the wingers having space and you've got a third centre-back in the middle preventing space for the players in the middle then they have a lot of difficulties.
That's why Luis Enrique was saying he hadn't planned to beat a 5-4-1, in fact for 25 years they have not prepared to play against it, it's normally 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 they face.
When they play against teams with four at the back, Barcelona use the spaces left by the full-backs, who are usually attacking or they come either very deep or very narrow, and that creates spaces on the wings, which is one of the keys for Barcelona. So it was very clever from Pellegrino to find a solution to that.
You also have to be lucky, and they had three shots on goal and scored twice, and that, mixed with lots of rotation from Luis Enrique made life very difficult for Barcelona.
Credit to Alaves, who were absolutely fantastic and never suffered. Pellegrino has said that he keeps hearing Messi resolves games for Barcelona, but he came on at 1-1 with 30 minutes to go and Alaves still managed to win.
I think there was a touch of complacency, because Barcelona didn't need to change so much. Yes, there were reasons Luis Enrique saw for so many new faces in the line up, but would he have made so many if Atletico Madrid were the rivals? Definitely not. I don't think he'll ever rotate seven players again for the rest of the season.
Atletico had a poor first half, but they improved in the second. They became more effective up front and took advantage of a rival with lots of doubts, especially after conceding the first goal.
But Atletico are a team that still haven't had a good 90 minutes of football in the way Diego Simeone wants - he is trying to make them control the game a bit more, attack as an unit and pressure high but all that is not coming at once just yet.
Antoine Griezmann scored a couple of goals and Simeone said that Atletico had already played well this season but had not scored the goals. Well, they finally arrived.
Guillem answers your questions...
With the initial hype over Espanyol, now that they're failing to hold on to leads, could they be in trouble? Tom
Espanyol have started full of doubts. It's an unbalanced squad, with too many forwards and not good enough full-backs. All the centre-backs are left-footed and the coach has said publicly that there is an even bigger problem - the mentality of the team.
He is trying to say that for many years Espanyol have been trying not to lose, and now we're asking them to win. Not sure if that is the case, but it feels it will be difficult to match the big expectations created this season.
How bad do you think it will go for Valencia? Is there a chance Pako could be sacked soon? Ghedin1878
Pako Ayestaran explained relatively easily why the results haven't been good this season. The first reason is lots of key players were sold or arrived late and these ones still have to adapt to the team. Secondly, they have been a little bit unlucky. It happened again at the weekend, even after Enzo Perez was sent off against Real Betis they still managed to go from 2-0 down to 2-2, and had a chance to win before they ended up losing 3-2.
At the moment, there are enough explanations to suggest the team has enough potential, but the work in pre-season didn't count for much because a lot of players went and new players came in, so the club is going to have to be patient. Having said that, it feels like the directors seem to have less faith in Pako than they have had in the past. So I hope results arrive and he probe them wrong.
With Real and Atletico being handed transfer bans, how will both cope with not being able to bring players in? Graham O'Brien
They can bring players in but not register them. I think Atletico are well prepared, their squad is young and they have two players per position.
Real Madrid is different, everyone says it's the best squad for many years, but it's a veteran squad. They've made La Liga their priority this season, they're rotating a lot and have used 21 players already, but Zidane, who is managing the situation cleverly so far, thinks he has the best squad Real Madrid have had for a while, so let's see if he is right.
Should Luis Enrique stop making bad substitutions: Pique, Iniesta and 2/3 of MSN? Hamse Ibar
Bringing on Iniesta, Suarez and Messi were not bad substitutions, I'm not really sure what you mean by that, but what is clear is that by making those changes Luis Enrique knows he got it wrong with his choice of line-up.
