London- Zinedine Zidane has told his Real Madrid players to forget their La Liga woe and concentrate on beating Tottenham in the Champions League at Wembley tonight.

The Spanish giants make their debut at the world-famous stadium on the back of a surprise 2-1 defeat at lowly Girona on Sunday. That left them eight points behind arch-rivals Barcelona in the La Liga table and with question marks hanging over Zidane just four months after he led the club to back-to-back Champions League titles.

Such crisis talk is part and parcel of top-class football now, and the Frenchman has issued orders to Cristiano Ronaldo and Co. to forget about their domestic troubles and prove they are still the team to beat by getting a win against Tottenham tonight.

“We have a Champions League game on Wednesday, we have to analyze (the Girona game) because if we lose it’s for a reason, but it wasn’t due to the attitude,” Zidane said.

“I don’t want to dwell on (the Girona defeat), on the first-half we did well but in the second half things did not go to plan.

“We know we can turn this around. We will have better days and our rivals will surely drop points over the course of the season.”

Real head into the match level on points with tonight’s opponents at the top of Group H. Both enjoy a six-point advantage over German side Borussia Dortmund, the only other team in the group who could feasibly prevent one of them progressing through to the knockout stages. But such is the side’s poor La Liga form that tonight’s clash is as much about the performance as it is the result.

The pair met last time out with Spurs getting a 1-1 draw at the Bernabeu, so Zidane will be all too aware that the North Londoners have the players to add to the problems facing his team.

One man unavailable to the Frenchman is Gareth Bale. The former Spurs star did not travel to London with the rest of the squad having failed to shake off a calf injury. Another key man unavailable to Zidane is defender Raphael Varane. The France international went off at half-time during the defeat to Girona with an adductor injury and has not recovered.

The same thigh problem has kept goalkeeper Keylor Navas out of the squad, his remaining in Madrid means Kiko Casilla is likely to continue in goal.

-Arab News