Image source, Marca

As European football writer Andy West explained in an article on our website this week, Bale appears to have become something of a scapegoat for Real's poor form.

The 11 points in the photo above detail Marca's analysis of Bale's performance this season, with Spain's most influential sports paper describing the Welshman as having made "apparently little effort to integrate with the group 20 months after his arrival", and "absent, lost and identifying little with the cause".

Good evening and welcome. You won't find any boxing puns here, promise.

Instead it's all about the 'crisis' at Real, and those inverted commas are there for a reason.

Just 10 months on from winning the club its 10th European Cup, not to mention ending 2014 with triumph at the Club World Cup and a record-breaking 22-match unbeaten run, the Spanish press have been going in with the big guns.

Image source, Reuters

Real president Florentino Perez called a press conference on Thursday and insisted: "Ancelotti will continue", after Marca claimed the Italian would be sacked if Madrid were beaten heavily in El Clasico next weekend.

And now, the focus seems to have switched to our man Gareth instead.

Out of the Copa del Rey, through by the skin of their teeth to the Champions League quarter-finals, and hauled off top spot in La Liga by Barcelona. The beginning of 2015 just isn't going to plan for Carlo Ancelotti's Real Madrid.

Tonight, with Barca having gone four points clear with a 2-0 win at Eibar yesterday, the Santiago Bernabeu is transformed into "a pressure cooker".

Image source, Marca

That's how Marca, external are billing it. On their front page today, the Spanish sports daily predicts Sergio Ramos and Luka Modric will be given a starting place ahead of next week's meeting with Barcelona, and that Gareth Bale faces "a new test in front of the Real fans".