(Football news) Real Madrid will take on Villarreal at the Santiago Bernabéu. Los Blancos have been in supreme form since returning from the international break. Now they will be looking to do the impossible task of overcoming a 12 point deficit in La Liga. Barcelona have only the La Liga to focus on but Real Madrid have a Champions League tie against Chelsea at the Santiago Bernabéu next week. Carlo Ancelotti may look to rest a few players before the big game. In La Liga Ancelotti may be thinking of giving players who don’t usually play a chance to get some minutes as it is practically impossible to win it.

Real Madrid are still without left back Ferland Mendy, other than that everyone else is fit. Antonio Rudiger, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Dani Ceballos, Nacho and Marco Asensio all started on the bench at the Camp Nou. Ancelotti could deploy all of them in a changed XI so that everyone is in the best possible shape against Chelsea. Villarreal are looking to push into the top 4 as they are currently 4 points off. They are coming into the game on the back of consecutive wins against Osasuna and Real Sociedad. Etienne Capoue, Gerard Moreno and Francis Coquelin are still unavailable while Raul Albiol is a doubt. Nicholas Jackson is suspended after his red card against Sociedad. 

Real Madrid need to keep the momentum going for the final half of the season. This team will go down in history if they somehow manage to pull off a comeback in the league from this position. There will be a lot of focus on the system Ancelotti uses. Against Valladolid he played a 4-2-4 which worked well but the Italian still didn’t go for that against Barcelona where he played in a flat 4-3-3. Regardless of the system a lot will depend on how desperate the team is because in these situations it will be easy for the players to give up and focus on the UCL.

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