APRIL 28 — It has been a strange season for Real Madrid.

Having finished the previous campaign as Champions League winners, they started the new season badly by losing the Spanish Super Cup against local rivals Atletico Madrid and then suffered a home league defeat to the same opponents, as well as suffering an embarrassing 4-2 loss at lowly Real Sociedad.

From the brink of crisis, however, Los Blancos quickly picked up their form and rescued their season.

Starting in the middle of September, they won every single remaining game for the rest of the calendar year, registering a club and indeed Spanish record of 22 consecutive victories.

Cristiano Ronaldo was in particularly outstanding form during that golden run, at one point scoring 12 goals in just five games, including three hat-tricks, and putting himself well on course to smash La Liga’s all-time single-season goalscoring record.

Real’s highly impressive run of success included a comfortable Clasico victory over Barcelona as well as a flawless Champions League group stage record and, to finish the year, a convincing triumph in the FIFA Club World Cup.

By the end of December, Carlo Ancelotti’s men looked close to unstoppable, with many pundits wondering whether they were poised to become the best team ever.

But the New Year ushered in a new Real Madrid — and not in a good way.

2015 started with a league defeat at Valencia, quickly followed by a Spanish cup exit against Atletico and then, in early February, a humiliating 4-0 league defeat against Atletico in a performance widely regarded as the team’s worst for many years.

From being the manager of all-conquering world champions, in the matter of just a few weeks, Ancelotti’s job was under threat with his position undermined by further defeats against Barcelona and Schalke, with the latter provoking particularly harsh criticism.

Fast-forward a few more weeks to the present day, however, and the Real Madrid picture is looking decidedly rosy again.

The demoralising sequence of failures against neighbours Atletico has finally been vanquished with last week’s victory in the Champions League quarter-final — which arrived despite four key players being out of action with injury and suspension — and Real also remain just two points behind Barcelona at the top of La Liga.

All of this goes to show that you can never quite know what is going to happen next when it comes to Real Madrid.

Disaster today, glory tomorrow. Despair on Thursday; euphoria on Friday. It’s a never-ending cycle of ups and downs, and with nobody — if they’re really being honest — knowing which is coming next.

Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti during their Spanish First Division match against Levante in Madrid March 15, 2015. — Reuters pic

Poor old Ancelotti, standing in the middle of all this and trying to make sense of it all, has nobly kept his calm throughout the turmoil.

But he must also be as perplexed as anybody by their inconsistency, and this also extends to the level of individual performance delivered by his team’s world-class players.

During the early months of the season, as we have seen, Ronaldo was pretty much unplayable; since the turn of the year, though, he has been a shadow of his former self and often a frustrated figure as a result.

When the team was dipping in January and February, at least they had the bright light of Isco, the young midfielder who earned rave reviews for a string of brilliant performances.

But in the last couple of weeks Isco has also suffered a drop in form, but rising to the fore in his place has been James Rodriguez, the Colombian international who has comfortably been the team’s best player in the last few weeks since he returned from a foot injury.

All those players, and others besides, have shown fabulous form at certain points of the season. But they have rarely all done so at the same time: With very few exceptions, it has been a case of Ronaldo or Isco or James or one of the other stars shining brightly, not all of them together.

With a Champions League semi-final tie against Juventus coming up and five league games still remaining, there is still time, of course, for Ancelotti to find the magic formula which allows all his players to excel simultaneously.

And if that happens, their stop-start season could still end up resulting in a La Liga and Champions League double. Or they could just as easily once again collapse into bitter recriminations.

With Real Madrid, you never know.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.