European football: The Zeroes from this weekend's action

Gareth Bale

Gareth Bale had an El Clasico debut to forget

A start for the world’s most expensive player in one of the biggest games in club football sadly didn’t have the desired effect that Real manager Carlo Ancelotti had hoped for.

Not only was Bale woefully out of form, but he was also, as mentioned earlier, deprived of the ball at his feet to work with. The Welshman was making a comeback from injury and looked well off the pace and was nullified with ease by Barcelona’s defenders.

He started off playing through the middle as Ancelotti decided to leave out Karim Benzema. His stay there was brief as he was quickly switched to the right flank with Di Maria swapping places. That had no effect either.

Ancelotti soon realized that he was better off having a traditional striker lead the line, considering that his midfield was so deprived of creativity and took off Bale to bring on Benzema.

In stark contrast, Barcelona’s summer signing Neymar, announced himself in the best way possible by grabbing the opener.

The Brazilian’s star has been on the rise as he has improved with every week and he has firmly established himself as the real deal and an added threat even when Lionel Messi is not firing on all cylinders.

Gareth Bale – still a long way to go to justifying that quite ludicrous sum that Florentino Perez and Madrid shelled out for him.