Adrian Ramos, Granada's on-loan Borussia Dortmund striker, said ahead of Real Madrid's visit to Los Carmenes in the wake of the club's relegation last weekend: "We want to give our fans something to be happy about in what's left of the season."
It was an admirable sentiment after a campaign that has provided the Granada support with little cause for cheer. El Grana's highest league position in 2016-17 was 12th, achieved in the first week of action. Since then the Andalusian club have never been higher than 17th and have spent 30 consecutive weeks in the bottom three.
Tony Adams, Granada's third permanent coach of the season, gamely took over until the bitter end after Lucas Alcaraz was shown the door but the Arsenal great was unable to stop the rot. Granada have scored once in four games under the former England captain and conceded two or more goals in each.
Things are unlikely to improve when Zinedine Zidane's scoring machine roll into town on Saturday. Cristiano Ronaldo's hat trick against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League ensured that Real extended their Spanish-record run of finding the net in consecutive games to 59, two shy of Bayern Munich's European record.
During that streak Real have hit the target 165 times. Granada have conceded 74 in 35 Liga games this season. Only the stage offers a glimmer of hope for the home side, Granada having picked up 16 of their 20 points at Los Carmenes where they have conceded fewer than Valencia at Mestalla and the same number as Celta in Balaidos. That and the memory of a 1-0 triumph against Madrid in February 2013, a game in which Ronaldo provided the winner at the wrong end, will sustain Granada in their pre-match preparations.
Since that defeat it has been mostly plain sailing for Real Madrid, although Granada put up a decent scrap home and away last season, losing by a single goal in both fixtures. Overall in the past seven meetings between the sides, Real have recorded seven victories, scored 24 times and conceded just twice. Granada's lowest ebb came in a 9-1 humbling in the Bernabeu in 2014-15 when Ronaldo helped himself to a five-goal haul for only the second time in his career.
Granada will take some solace from the probability that Ronaldo will be rested on Saturday along with several of Zidane's key players. The Real coach's rotation policy has been hugely successful this season and nowhere more so than in the case of the Portuguese, who has scored nine goals in his past five games. In Los Carmenes, Zidane will call on his second string to keep the side's title challenge on track.
So far this season and particularly in recent weeks Alvaro Morata, Marco Asensio, Lucas Vazquez, Mateo Kovacic, James Rodriguez et al have responded precisely as Zidane will have wanted, banging in 13 goals in their past three games together and destroying Deportivo La Coruna in a performance two weeks ago that had the pro-Madrid press purring about the B team being a more potent side than their senior colleagues.
That can be attributed partly to a desire to see the new guard succeed and also that they remain at the Bernabeu as a bet for the future, the investment having already been made. But there is an element of truth behind the hyperbole that followed the match in Riazor. Zidane's backups that day played as a complete team, full of selfless running and arguably more cohesiveness than the regular starters as Depor were picked apart. The Atletico game saw those plaudits shelved but they remain at arm's length and Zidane will be confident that his team's performance in Granada generates more eulogies in Sunday's papers.
The conundrum facing Adams will condition the outcome of the game. Granada haven't been at the races all season and now that the only consideration is avoiding a rock-bottom finish they have nothing to lose in what could well be the club's last crack at a Liga heavyweight for some time. Set up defensively and the home side may avoid a repeat of their record defeat at the hands of the side that inflicted it in 2015. Go out to put on a show for the fans and an early goal from the visitors could open the floodgates.
The Granada coach would dearly love to oversee a repeat of that 1-0 victory in 2013 -- a score line Adams is intimately acquainted with -- but the odds are stacked against a side that have won four games this season. Ramos and El Grana in all likelihood will have to wait until the final round of fixtures to give their fans a day in the sun when Espanyol, neither here nor there in the Liga standings, could be forgiven for turning up in flip-flops.
Rob Train covers Real Madrid and the Spanish national team for ESPN FC. Twitter: @Cafc13Rob.
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