7 - Philippe Coutinho - V1

Messigician said:

At least ibra had a good half season and broke the record for most consecutive goals.

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In Coutinho's defense, Ibra was playing alongside Pep's Barca.

Will probably go down as biggest flop in history, most likely. He did well to earn the penalty but... come on. It's Valladolid. And it's not like he did anything else of note.

Lmao @ his shot on goal.

The way he won our 2nd penalty was good tho.

If he doesn't do a MOTM performance against Lyon he should be benched for the rest of the season.

Flavius said:

If he doesn't do a MOTM performance against Lyon he should be benched for the rest of the season.

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do you think he'll start though?

if Dembele can regain more fitness i cant see why Coutinho should feature

Can't think of anything he brings that 21 year old Alena doesn't... And he costed 160m. We could have easily signed De Ligt and De Jong while also bringing in a solid striker with that kind of money.

sexy one-two with Suarez, but other than that..

Not bad last night.

At least I got a feeling that he was trying hard.

i might be the only one who thinks he is not flop or a disaster of a player,sure when you look at his performances they are miserable,but he usually plays out of position in a team that static,plays slow possesion football and has no system or any other game plan except pass to messi and wait for magic. he is top player that valverde don't know how to use because he can't play attacking football. if he leaves to any club with even basic system and game plan he'll shine again

ronniecro said:

i might be the only one who thinks he is not flop or a disaster of a player,sure when you look at his performances they are miserable,but he usually plays out of position in a team that static,plays slow possesion football and has no system or any other game plan except pass to messi and wait for magic. he is top player that valverde don't know how to use because he can't play attacking football. if he leaves to any club with even basic system and game plan he'll shine again

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Well i mean the disappointment mainly comes from his fucking 160M transfer fee. If he was just some 35-40M player like Lenglet, Malcom, Semedo it would be ok to not have a proper position for him or him showing as little as he did lately but he is the 3rd most expensive player ever and at his peak age too. "Playing out of position"is hardly an explanation for everything, and even of it was the question should be why we bought him in the first place when we knew exactly what kind of manager we have.

MTL_Barca said:

Well i mean the disappointment mainly comes from his fucking 160M transfer fee. If he was just some 35-40M player like Lenglet, Malcom, Semedo it would be ok to not have a proper position for him or him showing as little as he did lately but he is the 3rd most expensive player ever and at his peak age too. "Playing out of position"is hardly an explanation for everything, and even of it was the question should be why we bought him in the first place when we knew exactly what kind of manager we have.

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His place is in the middle of the field and valverde's job is to integrate him, which he cant deliver. If you buy player for 160m then there should be a proper vision where this player should play. I was 100% sure he would play in iniesta role and ocassionaly like iniesta did on the wing, when there was no other possibility.
Dembele suarez messi
Coutinho rakitic(arthur)
Busi(de jong next season is in the picture, alena too so there is some quality competition)
is the way we should play, ofcourse there would be some bad games in the beginning before he integrate himself completely, but that should be the way. He should be the guy who would bring ball forward faster then any other player can actually, and he is the best in that department if you watch his best games from liverpool and brazil. Valverde has that mentality of a small club where he still is not convinced that he can win games with attacking football. He lack balls, and thats the biggest tragedy of them all. Im 100% sure that if vidal, busi, arthur somehow are injured in same period, he would rather put roberto then coutinho in middlefield, sacrificing either dembouz or cou. Its frustrating to be a barca fan these days

Yeah but i don't think we can just blame everything on Valverde and his position. I mean how many times he got the ball just to straight up lose it seconds later by running into an opposing player? He wasn't that bad last season no matter where he played, everyone thought he will further improve naturally just by being on the team longer but instead he got so much worse.

That just looks like old inconsistent Coutinho tbh, what again would be ok if there wasn't a 160M price tag. Like i totally agree he should play in midfield (even tho i can see why many managers, not only Valverde, prefer to have "real" CMs instead if an AM like Cou) and that Valverde doesn't help him much but the 3rd most expensive player ever, in his prime (age wise) should in theory be good enough to at least show some good games here and there. It gets more and more clear that we massively overpaid and he could even end up as the biggest flop ever because atm i'm not convinced at all that it'll just fix itself by playing him central. Right now i'd rather see Frenkie-Arthur-Busquets or Alena-Arthur-Busquets/Frankie next season instead of giving Coutinho a free pass there.

I still think he has a lot of quality, but he has to improve and i don't think it just comes down to Valverde. I like to blame him as well but in this case it sounds more and more like an excuse.

MTL_Barca said:

Yeah but i don't think we can just blame everything on Valverde and his position. I mean how many times he got the ball just to straight up lose it seconds later by running into an opposing player? He wasn't that bad last season no matter where he played, everyone thought he will further improve naturally just by being on the team longer but instead he got so much worse.

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One can blame Valverde enough for Coutinho's situation for sure.
No doubt about his bad form (and a bit of lack of luck too) but just compare him to his fellow countryman Arthur for a minute.

Both shield the ball extremely well, both have low center of gravity. Countinho is a good dribbler, Arthur is okay. Countinho is very creative player, less merit goes for Arthur in that regard.
So why does Arthur perform much better if you compare their overall performances?
Easy to answer, because the difference is in the expectations towards them.
Coutinho's profile is somewhat similar to Messi's, I mean if when Messi plays relatively deep.

So what's wrong with him in the strange Valverde system?
Another easy one: Arthur loses much less balls but he is expected to play relatively safely. At the same time Coutinho is expected to represent much more of attacking danger, so he needs to take those risks that Arthur - for instance - is not expected to do.
So the difference between the two is how they make decisions right after a good initial move. Arthur will make a safe side-pass or back-pass, whereas Coutinho will not try to "play safe" so naturally he has to take some risks, but he has to do that in a position relatively strange to his character, because I guess we all agree upon the fact that he is not a winger, never been a real one.

When he plays for Brazil, usually right behind Neymar, apart from his known curved shots, he actually plays a kind of "Messi role", that's why he usually played quite well when played in the middle besides Messi. But in the present system, being forced to play on the extreme left, close to Alba, he simply doesn't know what to do, apart from looking for Messi and occasionally trying his famous shot from outside the box.
Thus, when Arthur finishes some nice moves with safe passes, he becomes a hero, but Coutinho doesn't know what to do and how to create some danger, because Suarez plays how he does nowadays and Messi is on the right, far from him.

I have said many times here that he was bought as an Iniesta replacement, so unless he is allowed to do just that, I can't see his future in the team, regardless of his price-tag, because I personally don't care for that.

Barca used to have the MSN, and the trio has delivered. Not only some good results but mostly spectacular and truly creative solutions.
But Valverde came with his mediocre personality, with the acidic face of a schoolmaster, Neymar left and that was the end of Barca's famous attacking football.
His main problem with Dembele was if he ran back often enough to defend, everyone had to focus on the defense part, and because both Messi and Suarez are untouchables, he tried to force that 4-4-2 which is still haunting every game.
So Coutinho will play spectacular games with Brazil - I'm sure of that - in a much more creative and free system compared to Valverde's pretty awful understanding of creative football...

omidferoz said:

But that might change next year, right? Barcelona is known for Movement and passing with a good manager I know he will be worth it. We might make a big blunder if we sell him. His first 3-4 months was pretty good if i remeber correctly and he was the best brazilian in the World Cup. He has the X-factor, he is just in a bad form which everyone in the team are beside Stegen, Alba, arthur and messi.

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Coutinho, Arthur, Alena, Dembele- that's the makings of a damn good NON-static attack.

Milik would be a good buy to replace Suarez. Great team awareness, surprisingly good passer and almost always shoots on target.