Carlo Ancelotti still on the brink of the sack – it is the Real way and it works

United will almost certainly stick with van Gaal, but they did sound Ancelotti out last May, Atletico’s Diego Simeone too. Van Gaal was the first manager they talked to as far back as March 2014 when David Moyes was still in his job when home hammerings by Liverpool and Manchester City were causing consternation at Old Trafford.

It seems crazy that Real Madrid are even considering replacing their coach. Unlike Jose Mourinho, he’s hugely popular with the players – probably in part because he’s not Mourinho.

“We work with more intensity under Ancelotti than Mourinho,” said defender Pepe on Wednesday. Having the support of players is crucial, but club president Florentino Perez called a surprise press conference on Thursday to say that Ancelotti will remain at Madrid – a vote of confidence after a poor run of matches.

Ancelotti deserved support. Not only is he very successful, but Madrid are the reigning European and world champions - the latter won only three months ago. Yet there were credible voices from within the Bernabeu suggesting that he’s on his way out before that Marca front page – and the paper is often the club’s mouthpiece.

Real Madrid and Barcelona are like no other clubs. The grumbles start when the team doesn’t win – though they can even start after a victory as Bobby Robson experienced when fans jeered a 6-0 Barca win against Salamanca. It wasn’t the right type of 6-0 win, you’ll understand.

A single defeat can spark a crisis, as the Catalans losing at Real Sociedad in January did. Two defeats and a draw in three matches, as Real Madrid have experienced in their last three games, ushers in immediate talk of the manager being sacked.

It’s bizarre. Ancelotti is being blamed for everything from the sinking Euro to Ronaldo splitting up from his girlfriend.

He’s one of the best coaches in the world. That sentence doesn’t need adding to, but he’s going through what even the best managers in the history of football have gone through: a blip in a football season that lasts ten months. Significant injuries to Pepe, Luca Modric (hamstring), Sergio Ramos (hamstring) and James Rodriguez (metatarsal) haven’t helped, but was he responsible for those injuries through a lack of rotation and not using his bench? Criticisms of Ancelotti, which range from his style of football being from his 1980s playing heyday in Milan, to him not favouring 4-4-2, say he’s used Sami Khedira and Asier Illarramendi too sparingly and given strikers Chicharito and Jese so few minutes that they’re not able to come on and change a game, as they may have done in the defeat at Athletic Bilbao last weekend.

Credit to the in-form Basques, who, as we stated in last week’s column are enjoying a superb run, but Madrid looked flat, especially their famed BBC front three of Bale, Benzema and Ronaldo. They scored an average of 2.7 goals per game in the 15 matches before the winter break. That figure has dropped to just 1.2 in the 11 games of 2015 so far. Bale has come in for considerable criticism from fans; goalkeeper Iker Casillas too. The club captain is the second best paid player at the Bernabeu, but they’ve tried to sell him before and it’s an awkward one for the club to handle given his status.

Barca took advantage of Madrid’s defeat against Athletic to go top for the first time since October. Ronaldo did score two and Benzema another in Wednesday’s Champions League games against Schalke 04.

Unfortunately it was a 3-4 home defeat with former Madrid striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar scoring the 84th-minute winner. Ronaldo doesn’t look anything like the player he was, has had enough with the media and says he won’t speak any more.

Ancelotti has accepted blame and claims the problem is in attack due to their inability to find a breakthrough in recent games. He claims his side are not efficient in front of goal, play too slowly and hold on to the ball for too long so that forwards don’t have the space. Watching a disjointed Real Madrid play long balls or deliver poor crosses to their forwards is odd and with so many great players they’ll surely click out of their malaise soon, but will it be too late? They face a must-win home game to Levante on Sunday first, and then they have a full week to prepare for next Sunday’s Camp Nou clasico. Lose that and Ancelotti is on thin ice.

Barca? They’re at fast falling Eibar (seven straight defeats, with just two goals scored in those matches) on Saturday before playing Manchester City next Wednesday.

They’ve become the machine that Madrid were before Christmas and Lionel Messi’s hat-trick last week saw him draw level with Ronaldo’s 30 league goals. The Madrid star held a 12-goal advantage before Christmas.

Madrid are not finished. No chance. Win the league (they’re only a point behind Barça) or become the first side since Milan in 1990 to retain the European Cup and it will be hard to sack Ancelotti. Success changes everything.

But who am I, an English writer, to tell Real Madrid, the club with more trophies and higher revenues than any other, what they should do? To preach that stability is the better model when Madrid have been hugely successful in spite of changing managers every five minutes? In spite of Perez interfering directly in team selection throughout his time at the club - be it overruling sporting directors for new players or the coaches when it comes to team selection? That’s when he communicates. Carlos Queiroz didn’t speak directly to his president after his first week at the club.

Perez was even mooting that Ancelotti wouldn’t be coach this time last year. Winning the decima – and against neighbours Atleti for an extra bonus - changed all that and the Italian got to stay, but for how much longer? Zinedine Zidane, who is doing well as coach of Madrid’s B team, is being lined up as a replacement, but when? And what if he has the audacity to lose two games on the bounce? Will they replace him with his son, Enzo, a 19-year-old midfielder who recently made his debut for his dad’s team after a decade in Madrid’s youth set up?

This is the Madrid model and, unpalatable as it may seem, it works.