Cristiano Ronaldo Has to Wait, but Real Madrid Can Be Pleased Winning Ugly

Last time out, it had been 4-0. The last time in the league, it had been 6-0. Before that, 5-0. 

Last time out against Granada, it had been 9-1. The time before, 4-0. 

In those five games, the three most recent against anyone and the two most recent against Saturday's opponents, Real Madrid's barbaric, mind-boggling aggregate score of 28-1 was perhaps only trumped by the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo had helped himself to 14 of the 28.

Fourteen.  

In our preview of Saturday's match here at Bleacher Report, therefore, we'd asked, "more of the same again, then?"

Over at Real Madrid's official website, fans were asked in the buildup not whether Real would win, but by how many. "[That] showed us a lack of respect" said Granada manager Jose Ramon Sandoval afterward, per Marca.

It probably did, but it had also summed up what everyone was expecting: Ronaldo would notch his 500th career goal, overhaul Raul as Real Madrid's all-time leading scorer and lead his team to another slaying of an Andalusian outfit whose attitude to defending has often been much like Diego Costa's to self-restraint.

Well, that's what was supposed to happen. But it didn't quite work out like that. 

Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

Dressed all in black, perhaps to disguise themselves from the team that shipped nine goals when dressed in red and white in their last visit of the Bernabeu, Granada arrived with both a plan and, crucially, intent. 

At every opportunity, Sandoval's men pressed with speed and in numbers, Toni Kroos and Luka Modric their prime targets, the idea clearly to disrupt the supply line rather than blunt the end product. In the opening minutes, the pressing even went as extreme as Youssef El-Arabi and Cristiano Biraghi hassling Pepe in his own box. 

There was also a genuine sense of purpose to their work in attack. Rene Krhin wriggled through Madrid's midfield like an eel stung by a taser, feeding Biraghi, whose cross forced Marcelo to make a rather panicked clearance one yard from the goal line. 

Twelve minutes later, after Krhin had dispossessed Marcelo, Granada had the ball in the back of the net thanks to Isaac Success' fine cross and El-Arabi's cool finish. Sadly for the visitors, the striker was ruled offside. Even sadder was that he wasn't.

It should have been 1-0 to Granada. 

JAVIER SORIANO/Getty Images

At the other end, Ronaldo was peppering the goal but not finding the back of the net. A quick, first-time strike was pushed away by Andres Fernandez; a dipping free-kick was parried into the path of Lucas Vazquez and then saved again; an inside-of-the-boot flick hit the post; a stinging, 30-yard left-foot thump was tipped wide; a header was saved; a venomous-looking low drive skidded just across the goal face. 

In total, Ronaldo took eight shots on goal, but he couldn't score with any of them. A week earlier against Espanyol, he'd taken seven shots and scored five goals, a "manita."

This was a day when the ball just wouldn't go in. The lone goal came from Karim Benzema. 

As such, Ronaldo will have to wait—not for long, you'd imagine—to break yet another record. Currently on 321 goals for Real Madrid, the Portuguese trails Raul on the club's all-time list by only two. What's staggering is that he's played 436 games fewer than the Spaniard.

Just let that sink in.

And when it has, consider this: Even if Ronaldo went eight seasons without scoring, he'd still have a better goals-to-games ratio than Raul. 

Madness. 

Francisco Seco/Associated Press

On Saturday, however, it was another man doing the whole record thing: Keylor Navas. Thanks to a string of fine saves and some excellent work coming off his line, the Costa Rican not only steered his team to victory but also registered his fifth clean sheet of the season, four of them having come in the league—the joint-best start in goal by a Real Madrid goalkeeper in league history. And therein lies the positive in all of this for Real Madrid: they're not conceding goals; they're not making their own task harder. 

Though Navas had to bail them out on a couple of occasions against Granada, though the likes of James Rodriguez, Gareth Bale and Sergio Ramos were genuinely missed, Real Madrid showed on Saturday that, amid this transitional phase in the early months of Rafa Benitez's tenure, they're prepared to get their hands dirty when it's not going to script. They can scrap it a little bit. 

Frankly, winning 1-0 might be better for Real Madrid, in a bigger-picture sense, than winning 7-3, as they've often done. For the main reason Los Blancos haven't been winning league titles is their defending, or a lack thereof—something emphasised by the fact that Saturday saw Madrid win at the Bernabeu having scored just a single goal for the first time in almost five years. 

"We had to put a real shift," Benitez said in his post-match press conference. "We know that we have to play well and win, but when a match doesn't go exactly as you'd like, winning and seeing the way the team put a shift in is positive."

He's right, it is. Real Madrid rarely win three points this way. Winning ugly isn't their thing. 

They might become a better team if they can.

Follow @TimDCollins