"Isco reminds me of a young Iniesta" – Víctor Sánchez

After a run of 22 consecutive wins, Real Madrid have lost their last three games – two of them in official competition. Is that a good sign ahead of Saturday’s game?

You never know because when your opponents have been winning regularly, they tend to be more confident. I’m sure that some people will think we’re going to be the ones who will be made to pay for their negative run. How Madrid go into the game isn’t what’s important – what matters is how we approach the game and how we perform over the 90 minutes. We know that we are going to suffer and we know that we will need to defend a lot and defend well. We’ll have opportunities of our own and we have to make sure we make the most of them.

The key then might to be repeat the first half performance at Camp Nou in which Espanyol held Barça to a 1-1 draw?

That first half display is something we can use as a reference and build on. But Real Madrid have more variants and can change to a different system more than Barça can. They can punish you in so many ways – from set-pieces, free-kicks from the wings, shots from outside the box… We will have to try to ensure that they can’t circulate the ball as they want and have both wings covered; the less comfortable they are, the better.

Do you think it’s tougher playing against Madrid than playing against Barça?

Madrid can vary their game a lot more than Barça but Barça are stronger going through the middle and better at a short-passing game. With Madrid you have to close them down and commit as few fouls as possible. At Camp Nou, Messi’s opener came through a combination of quick, short passes in a reduced space – Madrid find it harder to play like that which is why we have to close them down and not given them any space.

Madrid have tried to correct that aspect of their game by bringing in midfielders and playing Isco in a slightly advanced position. What are your thoughts on Toni Kroos?

He is a very complete player and he always makes the right decision. He’s good going forward but rarely joins the attack. He’s more of a goal score than Xabi Alonso but they are quite similar players in terms of style. At every moment he knows exactly what to do.

Do you think Isco is now a more mature player than before?

He reminds me of Iniesta a few years ago. He’s very quick when he’s on the ball – he hardly ever loses the ball and his final pass is excellent. He’s also more of a scorer than Iniesta. He’s a very good player.

What version of Espanyol can we expect to see at the Bernabéu on Saturday?

Being consistent is one of the aspects that we still have to work on. The easiest game we’ve had, against Eibar, we ended up losing and yet the most difficult one, against Valencia, was when we showed our better side and we didn’t deserve to lose that game. We need to be more consistent and not let what happened against Eibar happen again. We can’t afford to let our rivals take a two-goal lead against us.

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