Beaten by Getafe at home, four points off the pace: How long can Real Madrid keep going like this?

Martin Satriano had barely been in the game before he crashed a first-time volley into the top corner of the Bernabeu net on Monday night, six minutes before half-time, and that was enough.

Real Madrid, without Kylian Mbappe, without anything resembling what has made them the most successful club in European history, huffed and puffed through a second half they dominated without ever really threatening. Franco Mastantuono picked up a red card for dissent in added time.

Alvaro Arbeloa, who had never managed a senior professional side before January 12 this year, stood in the technical area looking like a man who knows exactly how this looks. And how it looks isn't good.

Four points behind Barcelona with 12 games left. Back-to-back La Liga defeats, after losing at Osasuna the weekend before. Out of the Copa del Rey. Manchester City coming to the Bernabeu in the Champions League round of 16 on March 10, the fifth consecutive season these two clubs have been drawn against each other in the knockout rounds.

You could blame the 43-year-old manager or agree that all this started the moment the club decided to sack Xabi Alonso just 233 days into a three-year contract, the morning after a 3-2 defeat to Barcelona in the Supercopa final in Jeddah.

Alonso had won 13 of his first 14 games in all competitions. He’d  overseen a 2-1 Clasico win at the Bernabeu in October that looked, at the time, like a statement of direction. But, among other issues, he soon faced a poor run from November, a dressing room that reportedly lost confidence in him, Vinicius Junior’s very public complaints about being substituted, and a relationship with Florentino Perez that was never as solid as it appeared from the outside.

They ended his tenure before it had really begun.

The man they replaced him with, the former right-back who spent seven years at the club as a player and won two Champions Leagues among eight trophies in that period, had coached the Real Madrid youth academy and Castilla.

“I don't think replacing him with Arbeloa is going to improve things too much,” former club president Ramon Calderon told Sky Sports.

It’s hard to argue with that reading, seven weeks on, especially after Monday night.

In fairness to Arbeloa, the players are the same ones who weren’t working for Alonso. The mood in the dressing room has reportedly improved, with Vinicius and Federico Valverde both said to be more settled under the new man.

Tactically, the data shows the two managers are similar in their approach, the long balls, the defensive line, the build-up structure. Madrid under Arbeloa aren’t playing a radically different style; they’re just playing the same style with slightly happier players, and the result hasn’t really improved.

The Champions League draw, confirmed on Friday in Nyon, hasn’t made it look any easier. Madrid will host City in the first leg on March 10, less than two weeks away now, and return to the Etihad a week later.

Historically, Madrid have edged this meeting: they knocked City out in the round of 16 last season, the quarterfinals the season before that, and the semifinals in 2022. The Premier League club’s only win in the recent sequence was in the 2023 semis.

But City already beat Madrid 2-1 at the Bernabeu in the league phase in December, and that was with Madrid at something closer to full strength.

Two consecutive losses is not the form you want going into that tie.

The La Liga situation is not looking great either. Barcelona lead by four points and have been the more consistent side for most of the second half of the season. The gap isn't too wide, twelve games is still a lot of football, and the Clasico at the Bernabeu later in the campaign remains a direct chance to swing things.

The question, at this point, is whether this is a temporary dip or something more. Madrid lost the league title to Barcelona last year and look likely to lose it again this year. They went out of the Champions League in the round of 16 last season, which felt like a one-off at the time.

Ancelotti’s departure, the failure to replace Toni Kroos and Luka Modric with anything close to their equivalent, Mbappe’s injury problems in his debut season at the club, is all starting to add up to a picture that looks less like a club in a rough patch and more like a club that hasn't solved its real problems and has now added to them by handing an inexperienced manager the keys to the car.