One goal and three assists in 11 appearances. A red card for pulling Nathan Saliba’s hair at Villarreal. A four-match LaLiga ban that stripped him out of the Clasico. By any measure, Vinicius Junior is having the hardest start to a season of his Real Madrid career, and the player who crossed for Kylian Mbappe’s opener at Camp Nou on 25 October was not him but 19-year-old Yan Diomande, the Ivorian winger Real Madrid signed from RB Leipzig in the summer.

Dani Carvajal is not buying the narrative that his teammate’s place has slipped away.

Speaking to Cadena SER’s El Larguero on Tuesday, the Spain full-back pushed back against the growing suggestion that Vinicius has lost his grip on the left flank.

“We will see that unstoppable Vini again very soon,” Carvajal told the show.

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Carvajal framed the current slump as a passing phase rather than a decline, pointing out that his longtime teammate has climbed out of worse before.

Four games out, then Celta on 21 November

The suspension itself is where the story bites. Vinicius saw red at Villarreal for grabbing Saliba, and LaLiga’s disciplinary committee handed down four matches: two for the hair-pull and two for his protests at the referee afterwards. The Clasico was the first of them. Sevilla, Racing de Santander and Valencia are the other three. The earliest he can play in LaLiga again is 21 November, when Madrid host Celta de Vigo at the Santiago Bernabeu.

The ban does not touch his Champions League eligibility, so Jose Mourinho can still pick him in Europe in the meantime.

Diomande changes the picture

What makes Carvajal’s defence stand out is the fact that Madrid did not visibly miss Vinicius against Barcelona. Diomande came in on the left and set up Mbappe’s 41st-minute opener with a cross from his flank. Raphinha equalised for the home side before Mbappe struck again in the 87th to win it 2-1.

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Mourinho has already backed the Ivorian publicly, and in a dressing room where minutes are the only currency that matters, Vinicius returns in late November to find a 19-year-old playing well in his position.

Carvajal’s answer to all of that was the El Larguero appearance itself. Rather than talk about Diomande, he talked about his teammate’s temperament.

“Vini Jr. is a fantastic person. He brings a lot of joy to the dressing room,” he told the show, before adding that Vinicius has pulled himself out of darker spells than this one.

Madrid’s next LaLiga fixture before his return is Valencia, the final game Vinicius will sit out. After that, Celta on 21 November is the date circled in his calendar.

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