Real Madrid unhappy Take Kubo isn’t good enough to start for Villarreal

Apparently, Real Madrid brass is letting it be known through Cadena Ser that their leadership is upset about Take Kubo’s playing time at Villarreal. Which reads to me a lot like Real Madrid feeling like they have the right to meddle in the management decisions of a club in their own league.

The league campaign is still young, and injuries and fatigue will set in, causing Emery to rotate more than he has so far, but frankly Kubo has not yet shown he deserves to be on the pitch over the other players we have. Perhaps when we have to travel to Israel, Turkey, and Azerbaijan we can play Kubo and rest our better players.

Quite simply, in a single striker formation, Paco Alcacer’s lethal finishing ability allows us to move Gerard Moreno out to the right. Gerard is one of the best football players in the world, and so of course Kubo will not start over him. In a two striker formation, Kubo has not shown he is clearly preferable to Chukwueze, and that’s a young player that we have far more invested in long term.

In 55 minutes of play, Take has been dispossessed or mis-controlled the ball 8 times and he’s only successfully receiving 71% of the passes coming to him. By comparison, Chukwueze averages about 5 possession loss instances per 90 and successfully receives almost 80% of the passes to him. Small sample sizes, to be sure, but if you can’t show me you’re more efficient than Samu I’m not really sure why anyone would think you need to be on the pitch.

Long term, I think Kubo’s best chance for consistent minutes will come on the left. Moi Gomez has been good so far this season, but he can’t play every single minute available and he’s the only natural left wing on the roster. If Kubo can play to that side of the pitch with some level of efficiency perhaps he can become more integrated into the rotation.

Kubo needs to step his game up, he’s not at Mallorca anymore. Real Madrid, for their part, are not doing their young talented player any favors by leaking things about his playing time to the press when he has not yet earned it.