All around him people were losing their heads but Carlo Ancelotti barely raised an eyebrow. Which is going some for him. His president was getting twitchy, his captain was getting whistled and his team was getting beaten. On TV sets, they were getting wound up, just for a change like. In England, Ángel Di María was getting even, or trying to. And in Catalonia, they were getting giddy with excitement. Real Madrid were on the front covers in Barcelona and that can only mean one thing. “Crisis!” cheered the headline in El Mundo Deportivo; “the worst Madrid,” gloated Sport. As for Ancelotti, he was just getting on with it.

Madrid had pursued the décima for a decade and seemingly forgotten it in six games. Di María had gone, Xabi Alonso had gone, and the Spanish Super Cup had gone, to Atlético de Madrid. Three weeks into the season they had won just once in the league – and a flat 2-0 win over Córdoba was nothing to boast about. They were beaten by Atlético and beaten by Real Sociedad and slipped down to 13th, six points behind Barcelona. No one in Spain had conceded more goals. “I feel like a manager who has to fix things,” Ancelotti admitted.

So he did.

Calmly, quietly, effectively, no crisis and no crying. Just as he always knew he would. “I feel like a manager who has to fix things,” he had said and then he had added: “… in the same way that I felt like a manager who had to fix things last season.” After Madrid had been beaten 4-2 by Real Sociedad, the Italian admitted that he “did not like” what he saw. But he didn’t panic. We’re not fully fit yet, he said. Soon we will be, he said. Soon we will be winning again. What mattered was May, not now. Madrid won the next seven games, scoring 32 and conceding just five. They climbed back up the table and climbed to the top of their Champions League group.

Still there was caution; some were unimpressed. Beating Basel and Ludogorets was no big deal. In Bulgaria, they had trailed 1-0, equalised with a penalty and not got the second until the 77th minute. In the league they had beaten Deportivo, Elche, Villarreal, Athletic and Levante to go with the win against Córdoba. In other words, their victories had come against the teams who on Monday morning stand 15th, 16th, 18th, 19th and 20th. Only Villarreal are in the top half (8th), and their own poor finishing had sunk the Yellow Submarine: they took 19 shots against Madrid and scored none. But then came Anfield and a 3-0 hammering. And even if Anfield is not all that these days, then came the biggest game there is: the clásico v FC Barcelona.

And on Saturday night, Real Madrid beat Barcelona 3-1 at the Santiago Bernabéu. It wasn’t just that they beat Barcelona, either; it was the way that they beat them. “More than a victory,” AS’s front page called it. This was the first time that Madrid had beaten Barcelona in the league by more than a solitary goal since 2008, the day of the famous pasillo, when Barça’s world was crumbling around their ears and every player, even ones who later turned out to be very, very good, looked very, very bad. It finished 3-1 and it could have been more.“That’s the way Madrid win!” one cover celebrated.

It could have been different, sure. Barcelona took the lead after three minutes and in the first half at least were nowhere near as bad as the post-mortems suggested. They didn’t so much shoot themselves in the foot as aim a bloody great bazooka at their big toe: Lionel Messi missed a great chance from six yards to put them 2-0 up, Iker Casillas blocking the shot after Luis Suárez’s assist; Madrid’s first goal was a ridiculous penalty; on the second, Pepe headed in all alone while Dani Alves went for a lie-down on the floor below him; and the third was even more ridiculous than the first. It started with a corner – a Barcelona corner – continued with Andrés Iniesta and Javier Mascherano running into each other and ended with the ball in the net. Then there’s the fact that Casillas made a superb save from Jérémy Mathieu that would have made it 2-2.

But afterwards Luis Enrique admitted that Madrid had deserved to win. “We played some quality football, especially on the counter, where we looked deadly,” said Madrid’s assistant coach Paul Clement. And at 3-1, the chances kept coming. AS counted eight of them, if a little generously. Barcelona were picked off as they tried, without much conviction, to advance. Every robbery started a run and every run was accompanied by three or four players sprinting forward like a Madridista stampede.

Nor though was it just about the counter-attack, which absurdly gets treated like some kind of dirty word in Spain, even though the precision and pace can be exhilarating. And it certainly wasn’t a case of pulling everyone back and waiting for the chance to hit a random long ball and chase it. Madrid’s possession was up to 43%, 10% more than the average against Barcelona over the last few years. If the best player on the pitch might just have been Madrid’s right-back Dani Carvajal, that was because of his attacking as well as his defending. On the other side, Marcelo ran at Barcelona. Toni Kroos and Luka Modric eventually took control, and Karim Benzema, like James Rodríguez and Isco, was superb. This time, it wasn’t about Ronaldo.

El País called it total football; there is more variety to Madrid now. And a hell of a lot of goals too. They have scored 28 in six league games, including the only three goals that Barcelona have conceded all season, and let in just four. “Real Madrid have to win playing spectacular football,” Ancelotti had announced when he arrived. Right now, they are.

So they should, you might say. After all, this is the most expensive team in history and the quality of the players makes excellence an obligation. If you have Ronaldo and Benzema and James and Kroos and Isco and Modric, you should play well. That is an idea that has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been conveyed at presidential level too: Ancelotti has not always enjoyed the protection or projection some might expect. Far from it. Even at times of success, he has not always been celebrated, both from the inside and the outside. “I have read that we won the Champions League in spite of me; that I don’t have the talent to run this team,” Ancelotti said recently. “I laugh a lot …” Who knows what might have happened had Sergio Ramos not headed a 92nd minute equaliser in Lisbon?

There is something in the idea of the primacy of players, of course. During an interview last week, it was put to Álvaro Arbeloa that he might be a coach one day, not least because he described himself as a player who does what the manager wants of him rather than what he feels like doing, because he studies the game carefully, and because he has played under some of the best. So who would his model be? The answer became a discussion of the roots of success in football, one that raised contradictions and questions, in which the answer remains unclear. If there even is an answer.

“The thing is I have worked with so many coaches, so many managers who are so different that in the end you think: ‘who do I look to?’,” he said. “They are all superb coaches. And sometimes I think to myself ‘how is it possible that I have worked with Del Bosque, Pellegrini, Mourinho, Benítez, Caparrós, Aragonés, Ancelotti, and they have all won but all with very different methods? And you sometimes think qué coño?, ‘what the hell?’ There is no one way of doing things, there is no secret.”

“You can’t say: ‘this is what works’ because something else works too. I look at all those great coaches and sometimes I thought ‘I wouldn’t do it like that’ and then things have worked out brilliantly and you think: ‘cago en la puta, que cabrón, sabe más que yo.’ [Bloody hell, the bastard, he knows more than me.] In the end the conclusion that you sort of come to is that football is about the players. It’s the players. The players need to be good. It is clear that Mourinho is fantastic, that Guardiola is fantastic, but what would happen in a team that was not as outstanding as the ones they had?”

Arbeloa talked about teams coming to the Bernabéu and playing well, but then finding it hard to find a way through and into the area. “For us,” he added, “with the beasts that we have up front … well, they’re machines and so we don’t have that problem.” And yet Arbeloa too talked about being well-worked tactically, about unity and about players fulfilling their duty: “If one doesn’t, fine. If two or three don’t, it collapses like a house of cards.” He talked about intensity and motivation, about effort, about being well drilled tactically, about unity, emotional balance and the mechanisms that make a team work; about the need to follow a manager, not go it alone. About the coach getting all that right.

Not all managers have. This weekend, Ancelotti highlighted the players after their victory, describing them as showing a professionalism that is “unique in my experience”, but although he underplays it, his own role has been vital too and the players recognise that. Ancelotti was in the press conference after Madrid won the European Cup in Lisbon when a group of players invaded the room, jumped on him and began singing “how could I not love you?”

A few months later, Ángel Di María departed and then so did Xabi Alonso, two players that the coach considered vital. Suddenly, all the talk was negative; suddenly it felt like a crisis. Ancelotti appeared undermined and his team weakened. He did not complain; instead, he rebuilt. And he did so as if it was all so normal, taking it in his stride.

It looks easy because he makes it look easy but the pressure is intense. Rather than contributing to it, he calms it. Last season he even managed to make the abnormal seem normal, gently swatting away the constant questioning about the rotation in goal. Ancelotti knows that much of the manoeuvring is political; he knows that some reports are far from coincidental. He knows too that managing expectations and egos is delicate, and not just in the dressing room. There’s a patience and a simplicity about him, a surprising lack of ego. “People say I am a club man,” he says. “Well, of course: I work for the club, not the players.”

He also sees the game with unusual clarity and a light touch, a flexibility that means that convictions stay the same but systems change. So do players’ roles. He has had to reinvent the team. Sometimes it goes against Ancelotti’s own preferences but he is not just crowbarring players in any old place to get as many stars in the side as he can. Instead, he sees qualities in his players that even his players don’t see.

Last season he had to reposition Di María and, after a slow start, it worked brilliantly; this season he has repositioned James and that now looks like it is working too. James could have been just another creative player to float up front but has become a left-sided midfielder instead; but not just a replica of what came before. “James is not Di María” Ancelotti said, and so readjustments were made; to the role and the style. This weekend, without Gareth Bale, the formation changed again. From 4-3-3 to 4-4-2; James now went right. At first, he did not convince – mostly because he seemed unconvinced himself – but it worked. Just like Isco works, and Modric and Kroos. He has made brickies of architects in the words of Roberto Palomar in Marca.

In the wake of the departures of Di María and Alonso, Ronaldo said that he was sure that Madrid’s style would have to change and said that if he had been in charge he might have done things differently. He was saying what most were thinking, pessimism clinging to his words. Yet there was a glimmer of optimism too; this problem was in the right man’s hands. What tends to get forgotten is that he also said that he was sure that the new players, “very good players”, would adapt quickly, perform well and maybe even improve the team. Not least because Ancelotti was there to help them do just that.

“The míster knows what he is doing. We have to let him work calmly,” Ronaldo said, as if Ancelotti ever does anything else.

Talking points

• Barcelona 22, Sevilla 22, Real Madrid 21, Valencia 20, Atlético 20 … Spain’s top five are now separated by just two points. “It won’t last beyond February. For now they’re just points,” said Diego Simeone. Killjoy.

• Two goals in the last five minutes left the Sevilla striker Carlos Bacca on his knees, pointing to the skies and praying. They left his team joint top of the table with Barcelona. Denis Suárez had got the equaliser in the 88th minute against Villarreal, then Bacca got the winner in the 93rd. “It’s cruel,” said Marcelino. “We’re building optimism,” Unai Emery said. This is the best ever start for Sevilla. They are the first division’s best side since February.

• Atlético won again. Another corner, another goal, another victory. They’re just two points off the top and they have played more games against the other five than anyone else, beating Madrid and Sevilla and losing at Valencia. They almost lost out in the other Madrid derby at Getafe when the home side showed a side to them that has rarely been seen before: a dirty side. Alexis was sent off for punching Mario Mandzukic and Juan Rodríguez was lucky not to be sent off too for a stamp. “Yes, I trod on him,” the Getafe player admitted, “but it wasn’t the kind that can break his leg. He pushed me in the move too and he pushed Alexis as well. There are clashes in football. We’re not playing Ludo.” At the full time whistle, Diego Simeone ran down the tunnel clenching his fists. The Getafe manager Cosmin Contra headed down after him and then a security guard turned to follow. Asked if anything happened, Contra said, deadpan: “yes, I grabbed him and we started punching each other …” He paused and added: “No, nothing happened. We didn’t even look at each other.”

• And now it’s official at last: Peter Lim is the new owner of Valencia. On Sunday he was at the game. Manchester United v Chelsea, that is. He had been at Mestalla the day before and was given a hero’s welcome before his team beat Elche.

• Two down, one to go. Monday nights are murder. Last Monday, Levante and Córdoba sacked their managers. Real Sociedad still haven’t sacked theirs but some are expecting it tonight. It does look like Jagoba Arrasate is safe for now, though: it looks like they won’t sack him until next week. The fans are getting impatient.

• Muñquera negra.

Results: Celta 3–0 Levante, Almería 1–0 Athletic, Real Madrid 3–1 Barcelona, Valencia 3–1 Elche, Córdoba 1–1 Real Sociedad, Eibar 1–1 Granada, Málaga 4–0 Rayo, Espanyol 0–0 Deportivo, Sevilla 2–1 Villarreal, Getafe 0–1 Atlético