"The Blancos legend believes that Carlo Ancelotti has put together the best Real Madrid side in recent years" - Goal. Well he also said they are in the "best condition" in years which I think it's true to some extends too (some might argue Mou's team when they broke La Liga's record was the best in years - even trophy wise didn't really prove so).

Thats sounds like they should dominate everywhere. One the contrary, Barca which is labeled by Mourinho as "The worst Barca in years" did lead La Liga until last week before they choked against the strong in form Sociedad and already defeated Real Madrid this season. They both are tight in the title race, Copa Del Rey, and very much likely in CL.

Am I the only one think either the 2 claims are weird, or something is wrong when "best of Real in years" struggles against "worst of Barca in years". Although, I personally like Real's performance this year the most, they are strong, deep, and definitely the team to beat.

The 2 claims are yet still to be proven, we are surely going to witness some awesome football between the 2 rivals.

Just a site note, as and MU's long life fan, I gotta say this is definitely a FACKIN WORST MU in years. Makes me cry.

Don't cry, please don't cry. If we don't win the Champions League, we can still win a domestic trophy. Oh wait....

@Messi, let's hope we can do what Chelsea did... :( Even though it sounds naive, Chelsea back then was nothing but an "insane parking the bus", they had one of the best defend ever... We have NOTHING like that now... but let's keep the HOPE up :(

Best Madrid recently: 2011-12
Worst Madrid recently: 2008-09

Best Barcelona recently: 2008-09
Worst Barcelona recently: 2012-13

For Barcelona, you have to understand that what they've achieved in Pep Guardiola's first season is so good, that's the question after that wasn't "when will they decline?" but rather "will they ever be able to repeat their sextuple feat?". The Barcelona in 2013-14 may be the "worst Barcelona in years", but is still one of the best teams in the world, and capable of being serious contenders for every trophy they participate in. This is where you realize that they're being compared to the Barcelona of 08/09, and that team was absolutely legendary. So yes, this may be the "worst Barcelona in years", but this "worst Barcelona in years" is still one of the best in the world.

As for Real Madrid, nope. This is not the "best RM in years", not unless we win 2+ trophies this season. I'm not saying it's not impossible, and it is certainly within our reach, but I just think that it's unlikely. Ancelotti has just built his team up, and it's going to take a while for us to gel the way he envisions it. For me, Mourinho's Madrid in 2011-12 was impeccable, losing out to Barcelona themselves in the Copa (which was pretty f**king controversial), and losing to Bayern on penalties because they had to play a Clasico in the weekend between the two Bayern games, which made them tired as hell (and because I'm still skeptical that Gomez dived for their penalty). We absolutely blew away La Liga with a much more convincing 100 points that the one garnered by Barcelona recently. So unless Ancelotti is capable of reaching those heights again, I don't think that this is the "best RM in years".

We didn't have difficulty beating Barcelona recently. If you watched the game, you could tell that the first half was all Barcelona, and the second half all Madrid. Madrid's performance in the second half was almost perfect, and to be honest, how many times do you expect Alexis to do a perfect chip from outside the box like that? Took a golazo to beat us, and that's often all that separates two very good teams.

Also had a penalty call denied from Ronaldo. Not saying it should've been a penalty, because he dived against Juventus a couple days earlier (got karma in the ass, serves him right), but it was still a penalty. :P

"Worst Barça" has been having dramatic different types of games. They won arguably the best team in the BPL 2-0 and then they lose 3-1 to Sociedad. They really need to get more faith into the game (Im not saying that they have any but losing to Spanish teams with many mistakes is not allowable at this point with Real Madrid in front. As of Real Madrid, some can argue that they are having one of their best seasons, even thought they didn't start out good but they are getting reasonable results with Ronaldo banned, and if they keep on going on top flight, they might win the La Liga. My point here is that claiming these statements about these two teams is useless because one day they perform outstanding, in others they completely suck.

BTW, Man U. fans, SAF's first couple of seasons were not that good so have some more faith in Moyes, and maybe You'll win.

We are doing many rotations, which is good because we seem fit for the big games and at the same time we lose points because our replacements are not in form at all, Montoya/Song are disapointing and make us strugle.
So, yes i have mixed feelings, we beated RM which is very important for us but we dont have the consistence we had past years and its annoying.
We are the extreme opposite of last year, we dont rely on Messi in CL and we have more chances to compete this year, but we lost the consistence we had last year in the League.
Real Madrid of this year is way BETTER than 2011/12 Real Madrid, i remember they were king of comeback and won many points in the end of the game, but this year, they are dominating and winning games easily by showing dominance...
They showed a Champions mentality until now in la Liga, but Mourinho is the best Cup coach in the world and they will lack his tactics in CL. The Madrid derby next week will give us more informations, hope Atletico wins the game so we can catch up quickly.
I dont know if Martino lack some autorithy, some players like Piqué seem to chose games. Anyway, the coach is making his own choices... ( Rendez-vous at the end of the season ).
My conclusion is that this year, we can hope to do something in CL, but we are less consistent in la Liga comparing to the last year, that could be explained with the incredible form of Lionel Messi in last year first leg until his injury against PSG. This year, we have a good season but not an amazing one as we are used to.
I see us winning Copa del Rey, and Madrid winning la Liga and im hoping to go as far as possible in CL.

@Dynatian has a very good point on Barca view of being the "worst" but only to compare with their legendary year under Pep, and yes they are still one of the best in the world. I dont think we can say it's the worst yet, because they are still contenders for all competitions. Their defend is still ridiculously bad as from last year, like @SoccerBoss and @tikitaka have pointed out they are quite inconsistent in form. I agree it might be from the rotation policy too. Tata is trying to make Barca's tiki-taka less predictable and having more of a plan-B.

However, saying Barca this year is not or less dependent from Messi is not so true either... From what I see, they are still very much dependent from him, the number of games and goals while Messi was absent were mostly against weaker teams. I dont see they can replicate those kind of wins without him when playing against bigger teams. So we just have to wait and see, the best part of the season is yet to come.

As for Real, it's quite hard to say this year is the best or 2011/2012 is the best in years... @Tiki-taka has a good point that back then a lot of times Real won their games in the last minutes - a sign of struggling (typical Mourinho, his team would not let a point slip away until extra-time, the guy is CUP winner), but this year under Alcelotti they dominate opponents in most of the games. However, reaching the record RM had in 2011 is very hard and that's still a big factor to contribute to this debate.

I think Real this year plays better football (not necessarily a better team).

@SoccerBoss: yeahh yeayhhh, we always say that to ourselves, but Moyes has failed us so many times not because of the points we've lost but the way we've played. We are still supporting MU and him though

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