Thibaut Courtois not missed too much as Andriy Lunin puts in a solid shift for Real Madrid | OneFootball

Real Madrid were back in action in La Liga on Saturday and as has been the case for the last few games, they once again had a very thin squad available to play this game. Still, getting a result was essential for the Merengues if they were to remain in contention for the league title, as they were already 3 points behind Barcelona before the start of this game.

Several important starters for Carlo Ancelotti were missing for this game. One such player who was unable to make the squad list was Antonio Rudiger. The German was unavailable for this game due to an illness but is likely to be available for the upcoming crucial game against Atletico Madrid in the UEFA Champions League Round of 16.

Another surprising absence from this squad list was that of the goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who was suffering with some discomfort in his knee, and was thus rested for this league game.

In his absence, the Ukrainian goalie Andriy Lunin took the spot between the sticks, and put in quite a reassuring performance that did not make Carlo Ancelotti or the Real Madrid fans miss the Belgian goalkeeper too much.

As Sofascore statistics show, the Ukrainian made 5 saves in this game in total, 3 of which came from shots taken from inside the box.

However, Lunin could have had a shaky start to this game, as his positioning was far from ideal when Rayo took a corner in the 7th minute. Luckily, Aridane Hernandez’s header went off-target when Lunin was quite far from his line and had no reasonable chance to make a save if the shot was on target.

However, he made his importance known as he made a diving save from a powerful shot from Embarba right after Kylian Mbappe had put his side ahead.

But he was not as agile as the first half approached its end and Rayo Vallecano scored a goal in injury time. Pedro Diaz took a powerful shot that was quite near the Ukrainian goalkeeper, and he should have got a hand in it. However, the shot hit the crossbar and apparently came out, but a VAR review showed that the ball had actually crossed the line and the goal was awarded to the visitors.

Neither of the two sides was able to impress in the second half, and thus, the Real Madrid goalkeeper did not have a lot to do in that part of the game. His only meaningful contribution in the second part of the game came in the 91st minute, as he caught a rather tame header from Aridane Hernandez to ensure the Merengues ended the game with the full three points.

Thus, this was an overall good outing for the Merengue substitute goalkeeper, and he once again showed that Carlo Ancelotti has a reliable option to fall back upon whenever the Belgian goalkeeper is unavailable.