2012–13 Season - Successful, Fair or Failure?
- Thread starter Sultan
- Start date
DonAndres
Wild Man of Borneo
Fair
The league win was thanks to the momentum we had built up in the first half of the season and there were quite a few troubles in the 2nd half.
We didn't perform too admirably against big teams aside from that one Milan game but this was partially due to the fact that Tito was ill and we had multiple injuries. Everyone is quick to criticize Tito for the 2nd half woes but seem to forget that we had our best start in la liga history thanks to him. Overall not an amazing season but not a horrible one either.
The league win was thanks to the momentum we had built up in the first half of the season and there were quite a few troubles in the 2nd half.
We didn't perform too admirably against big teams aside from that one Milan game but this was partially due to the fact that Tito was ill and we had multiple injuries. Everyone is quick to criticize Tito for the 2nd half woes but seem to forget that we had our best start in la liga history thanks to him. Overall not an amazing season but not a horrible one either.
raskolnikov
Well-known member
League has been very successful, we bossed it. beforehand, dominating the league and going out in cl semi's seems very acceptable.
Yet when you look closer and take into consideration getting schooled by Bayern, being inferior in the majority of the classico's, depending too much on Messi for goals, the obvious flaws in defence and lack of pressing its best to consider it fair.
Given the injuries, tito & Abi and potential we still have to get back on top its not been a bad year and we should be optimistic, but first: :beer2:
Yet when you look closer and take into consideration getting schooled by Bayern, being inferior in the majority of the classico's, depending too much on Messi for goals, the obvious flaws in defence and lack of pressing its best to consider it fair.
Given the injuries, tito & Abi and potential we still have to get back on top its not been a bad year and we should be optimistic, but first: :beer2:
Semi-Neutral
Sir Alupp Heynrguson
Between fair and successful; though on paper our results were good, we disappointed against the big teams and could have done better.
F
Flavia
Guest
Satisfied. Given all the problems this season had, with Pep gone, Tito relapsing and being away during a crucial part of the season, winning la liga back was great. The cl was a disaster, and the team showed a lot of problems. Let's hope Tito can fix them for next season.
diegomessi
Anxiously waiting for the next match
lol how can a season where we are la liga champs not be a success?? spoiled glory cules
footyfan
Calma, calma
Apologies in advance for the wall of text that follows
If I'm being totally honest, I didn't enjoy this season a lot. Forget the match results, the team just didn't entertain me with magical breathtaking play like in previous seasons. Even last season was better IMO despite the poor away results. I know I have really high standards as far as this Barca side is concerned but I guess it's because they're so good I just expect them to deliver all the time. It's obviously unrealistic, given the ageing in our squad and possible loss in motivation. We've had injuries too - but how much of that was bad luck and how much was poor management?
Moving on, was this season successful? We've won La Liga but have missed out on all other trophies. We seem to have regressed as a team so much that attributing our title victory to one player would not sound ridiculous.
We started off with a great win over Madrid in the Supercup that was only blotted by a Valdes howler. Nevertheless, I was confident we would claim the cup. It was not to be - Madrid should've destroyed us by 6 or 7 goals in the second leg and it was only a moment of Messi genius that gave us any hope. A foreshadowing of the season perhaps (especially in terms of big games)?
In La Liga, it was the Messi show every week save for the odd outstanding game by Fabregas and Iniesta. Looking at all the big games in the league, I can spot only two great performances, the 4-1 win vs Atletico and the 5-1 win vs Bilbao:
vs Valencia - Won the first game through an Adriano golazo in the first match and surviving a valiant Valencia attack towards the end. Average performance from the team. The second game, we were just poor and lucky to come away with a point from Messi's penalty.
vs Sevilla - Despite the brilliant comeback in the first game, Sevilla can feel hard done by the result and the officials in that game. Without Fabregas' play-acting, Medel might not have been sent off and things could've been totally different. Probably should've lost that match. In the second match, again we were poor as a team, but Tito/Roura made a great switch playing Villa in front of Messi and profiting from goals for both players. Props to Tito/Roura for that game, although one could argue that it was a fairly obvious call that in all fairness shouldn't have taken so long to be implemented.
vs Atletico - outstanding in the first match, let's see what happens tomorrow
vs Bilbao - outstanding in the first match, quite poor in the second. Needed Messi's introduction and his genius to have any chance of winning, only for our defence to gift Bilbao an equaliser. The match saw Tito make a very bad move bringing Iniesta as a late substitute despite expecting the onslaught from Athletic in the closing minutes.
vs Real Madrid - We coped admirably with an Adriano-Masch partnership, but Madrid really really should've won that first game. Missed a whole host of chances in the first half hour. We needed Messi once again. He scored from a Pepe mistake and a free-kick, two very individualistic goals that did not really involve the Barca team. We were horrendous in the second match and got beat by Madrid's B team.
In the Copa del Rey first leg, we couldn't take advantage of a makeshift RM backline, really should've scored more but even so Madrid had quite a few chances to get a positive result. In the second leg, again Madrid displayed their recent superiority over us in H2H matches. Shocking performance from Barcelona. We've won just 1 of the last 8 or 9 Clasicos, running back to Jan 2012.
vs Celtic - Only got a 94th min winner through Alba in the first match but we played well I thought. Second game, I think we deserved to lose and lose we did. Apart from the Celtic games, we played quite well in the group stages, although we only had a narrow comeback victory over Spartak thanks to two Messi goals. But we played well that match.
vs Milan - 2-0 loss to Milan that probably has not had a worse side in the past 25 years. We made up for it with the best performance of the season but that game only papered over the cracks that were becoming increasingly apparent.
vs PSG - OK we didn't have Messi, but this must not be an excuse for this Barcelona side that can count on multiple WC, Euro, CL winners. PSG really should've progressed, they played outstanding in the second leg. Ibra did have an offside goal in the first leg, but on the balance of play, I think PSG were the deserving team from that tie.
vs Bayern - 7-0 aggregate loss means it is impossible that I consider this season as successful. The worst semi-final defeat by a team in the CL/European Cup ever. WOW. I don't want to talk more about this tie.
Things I liked:
- Messi's quality and consistency
- Iniesta's and Busquets' peak level seems to have risen and the aesthetic quality of their play has also risen.
- Adriano performing the utility player role with aplomb.
- Valdes had a good season despite the early setback.
- Fabregas' performance in the first half of the season.
- The team's (or should I say Messi's) ability to come from behind.
Things I didn't like:
- Poor transfer policy - Didn't strengthen our team where needed.
- Poor defence - Alves and Pique losing their mojo, others being mediocre at best. I still like Alves but he doesn't seem the force he was in previous seasons. I really like Alba too but I don't think he's that great defensively. I don't really count on Puyol and Abidal anymore, they should not be part of our long term plans.
- Mismanagement of Thiago, Montoya, Bartra, Villa and Tello.
- Poor form of our wingers Pedro and Sanchez.
- Fabregas' inconsistency and his inability to play well in the second half of the season. Also, after 2 years here, we still don't know what his position or role is at Barca.
- Xavi's decline in impact on the game - He still plays well but he's far too conservative now to be decisive like before. It may be tactical instructions but that still doesn't change the end result of what I see in games.
- General quality of our play - Not enough tiki-taka this season, just stale possession. Moments like the rondo vs Malaga were a rarity this season, while plays of that quality were plentiful even last season. Didn't like to see Messi walking around all the time. Or that our team will only look to him in the final third.
- Messi dependency for goals - List of games influenced by Messi goals and impact: Osasuna away, Spartak home, RM home, Depor away (arguable), Betis away, Granada away, Celta Vigo away, PSG home, Bilbao away, Betis home (arguable). Too many for my liking, and I tried to leave out as many games as I could.
Overall, I would say FAIR.
If I'm being totally honest, I didn't enjoy this season a lot. Forget the match results, the team just didn't entertain me with magical breathtaking play like in previous seasons. Even last season was better IMO despite the poor away results. I know I have really high standards as far as this Barca side is concerned but I guess it's because they're so good I just expect them to deliver all the time. It's obviously unrealistic, given the ageing in our squad and possible loss in motivation. We've had injuries too - but how much of that was bad luck and how much was poor management?
Moving on, was this season successful? We've won La Liga but have missed out on all other trophies. We seem to have regressed as a team so much that attributing our title victory to one player would not sound ridiculous.
We started off with a great win over Madrid in the Supercup that was only blotted by a Valdes howler. Nevertheless, I was confident we would claim the cup. It was not to be - Madrid should've destroyed us by 6 or 7 goals in the second leg and it was only a moment of Messi genius that gave us any hope. A foreshadowing of the season perhaps (especially in terms of big games)?
In La Liga, it was the Messi show every week save for the odd outstanding game by Fabregas and Iniesta. Looking at all the big games in the league, I can spot only two great performances, the 4-1 win vs Atletico and the 5-1 win vs Bilbao:
vs Valencia - Won the first game through an Adriano golazo in the first match and surviving a valiant Valencia attack towards the end. Average performance from the team. The second game, we were just poor and lucky to come away with a point from Messi's penalty.
vs Sevilla - Despite the brilliant comeback in the first game, Sevilla can feel hard done by the result and the officials in that game. Without Fabregas' play-acting, Medel might not have been sent off and things could've been totally different. Probably should've lost that match. In the second match, again we were poor as a team, but Tito/Roura made a great switch playing Villa in front of Messi and profiting from goals for both players. Props to Tito/Roura for that game, although one could argue that it was a fairly obvious call that in all fairness shouldn't have taken so long to be implemented.
vs Atletico - outstanding in the first match, let's see what happens tomorrow
vs Bilbao - outstanding in the first match, quite poor in the second. Needed Messi's introduction and his genius to have any chance of winning, only for our defence to gift Bilbao an equaliser. The match saw Tito make a very bad move bringing Iniesta as a late substitute despite expecting the onslaught from Athletic in the closing minutes.
vs Real Madrid - We coped admirably with an Adriano-Masch partnership, but Madrid really really should've won that first game. Missed a whole host of chances in the first half hour. We needed Messi once again. He scored from a Pepe mistake and a free-kick, two very individualistic goals that did not really involve the Barca team. We were horrendous in the second match and got beat by Madrid's B team.
In the Copa del Rey first leg, we couldn't take advantage of a makeshift RM backline, really should've scored more but even so Madrid had quite a few chances to get a positive result. In the second leg, again Madrid displayed their recent superiority over us in H2H matches. Shocking performance from Barcelona. We've won just 1 of the last 8 or 9 Clasicos, running back to Jan 2012.
vs Celtic - Only got a 94th min winner through Alba in the first match but we played well I thought. Second game, I think we deserved to lose and lose we did. Apart from the Celtic games, we played quite well in the group stages, although we only had a narrow comeback victory over Spartak thanks to two Messi goals. But we played well that match.
vs Milan - 2-0 loss to Milan that probably has not had a worse side in the past 25 years. We made up for it with the best performance of the season but that game only papered over the cracks that were becoming increasingly apparent.
vs PSG - OK we didn't have Messi, but this must not be an excuse for this Barcelona side that can count on multiple WC, Euro, CL winners. PSG really should've progressed, they played outstanding in the second leg. Ibra did have an offside goal in the first leg, but on the balance of play, I think PSG were the deserving team from that tie.
vs Bayern - 7-0 aggregate loss means it is impossible that I consider this season as successful. The worst semi-final defeat by a team in the CL/European Cup ever. WOW. I don't want to talk more about this tie.
Things I liked:
- Messi's quality and consistency
- Iniesta's and Busquets' peak level seems to have risen and the aesthetic quality of their play has also risen.
- Adriano performing the utility player role with aplomb.
- Valdes had a good season despite the early setback.
- Fabregas' performance in the first half of the season.
- The team's (or should I say Messi's) ability to come from behind.
Things I didn't like:
- Poor transfer policy - Didn't strengthen our team where needed.
- Poor defence - Alves and Pique losing their mojo, others being mediocre at best. I still like Alves but he doesn't seem the force he was in previous seasons. I really like Alba too but I don't think he's that great defensively. I don't really count on Puyol and Abidal anymore, they should not be part of our long term plans.
- Mismanagement of Thiago, Montoya, Bartra, Villa and Tello.
- Poor form of our wingers Pedro and Sanchez.
- Fabregas' inconsistency and his inability to play well in the second half of the season. Also, after 2 years here, we still don't know what his position or role is at Barca.
- Xavi's decline in impact on the game - He still plays well but he's far too conservative now to be decisive like before. It may be tactical instructions but that still doesn't change the end result of what I see in games.
- General quality of our play - Not enough tiki-taka this season, just stale possession. Moments like the rondo vs Malaga were a rarity this season, while plays of that quality were plentiful even last season. Didn't like to see Messi walking around all the time. Or that our team will only look to him in the final third.
- Messi dependency for goals - List of games influenced by Messi goals and impact: Osasuna away, Spartak home, RM home, Depor away (arguable), Betis away, Granada away, Celta Vigo away, PSG home, Bilbao away, Betis home (arguable). Too many for my liking, and I tried to leave out as many games as I could.
Overall, I would say FAIR.
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La Liga is our bread and butter. Given the circumstances this season, the league title was a success. Although you always have those 'what ifs' in your head at the end of the season. Tito's illness and Messi's injury came at bad times and the heavy defeat to Bayern left a bad taste.
All in all a satisfying season. (IMHO)
All in all a satisfying season. (IMHO)
Arachnid
New member
Succesful considering the circumstances.
I'm not even talking just yet about Tito's cancer. We've had serious trouble from day one, suffering from an inadmissible lack of defensive depth: we didn't buy the (at the very least) world class CB urgently needed for several seasons already, with Zubi believing (god knows where he got the idea from) that an attacking midfielder like Song was enough cover for that, and that medical science was for chumps, so Abidal was going to be back by mid-season and age just wouldn't affect Puyol. And of course, somebody should have informed him that the managerial staff didn't trust Bartra at all. Also, Tito's choice to go with two full-on attacking fullbacks didn't help.
All this I still find a horrifying hurdle to jump, and yet the team managed to make record-breaking numbers before the Christmas break. Of course, when it looked like it was the time to solidify the team and start rotating, Tito's cancer came back and the board offered no solutions, aside from allowing Roura to just repeat the same exact gameplan over and over with the same formation, until Milan and Madrid were able to defeat us with ease because they knew our tactics from the inside out.
The sum of having been suffering all season from a makeshift defence, held by spit and tape, and the lack of preparation and rotation in the key months of mid-season meant that we struggled to reach a semi-final that became too high a mountain to climb when the castle of cards started to crumble: injuries from several key players, lack of depth in the bench and lack of form from the only options left in said bench, like Piqué, who had been playing way too much minutes, meant that a superb team like Bayern, a side capable of dealing with ease with an impressive team like Juve, just steam rolled us.
This is a season that could be the start of another impressive run, if the powers that be decide to look at the mistakes made and offer actual solutions, preferably not by the same people who decided that not signing (at least!) an actual CB was a good idea. Here's to hope.
I'm not even talking just yet about Tito's cancer. We've had serious trouble from day one, suffering from an inadmissible lack of defensive depth: we didn't buy the (at the very least) world class CB urgently needed for several seasons already, with Zubi believing (god knows where he got the idea from) that an attacking midfielder like Song was enough cover for that, and that medical science was for chumps, so Abidal was going to be back by mid-season and age just wouldn't affect Puyol. And of course, somebody should have informed him that the managerial staff didn't trust Bartra at all. Also, Tito's choice to go with two full-on attacking fullbacks didn't help.
All this I still find a horrifying hurdle to jump, and yet the team managed to make record-breaking numbers before the Christmas break. Of course, when it looked like it was the time to solidify the team and start rotating, Tito's cancer came back and the board offered no solutions, aside from allowing Roura to just repeat the same exact gameplan over and over with the same formation, until Milan and Madrid were able to defeat us with ease because they knew our tactics from the inside out.
The sum of having been suffering all season from a makeshift defence, held by spit and tape, and the lack of preparation and rotation in the key months of mid-season meant that we struggled to reach a semi-final that became too high a mountain to climb when the castle of cards started to crumble: injuries from several key players, lack of depth in the bench and lack of form from the only options left in said bench, like Piqué, who had been playing way too much minutes, meant that a superb team like Bayern, a side capable of dealing with ease with an impressive team like Juve, just steam rolled us.
This is a season that could be the start of another impressive run, if the powers that be decide to look at the mistakes made and offer actual solutions, preferably not by the same people who decided that not signing (at least!) an actual CB was a good idea. Here's to hope.
Barca8
New member
Satisfied
There are quite a few things that could have been better (transfers, lack of motivation, energy and tactics in big games) and things that need to be addressed and fixed before next season but despite all that we are still CHAMPIONS!
Few teams ever win a trophy or get to call themselves champions of anything but we have won our 22nd Liga Title. As a Barça supporter that is something we can all be really happy about.
Cheers to that :beer2:
There are quite a few things that could have been better (transfers, lack of motivation, energy and tactics in big games) and things that need to be addressed and fixed before next season but despite all that we are still CHAMPIONS!
Few teams ever win a trophy or get to call themselves champions of anything but we have won our 22nd Liga Title. As a Barça supporter that is something we can all be really happy about.
Cheers to that :beer2:
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M
mitkoa7x
Guest
7-0 CL semi final defeat is nothing short of a failure
darthvader7888
Banned
Fair, I suppose. Won the league, had a great first half of the season, but it's also clear that we have issues that need to be mixed. Not to mention individual brilliance (especialky from Messi) is a big part of why we won the league. And we were shit in big games aside from the Milan game.
Also, Tito's been meh this season. Tactics and motivation are a huge part of why we were so shit in big games (aside from the Milan game, props to Tito for that one though). Guess whose job those are? He's also been shit with subs a lot of the time, I mean, not bringing on any subs against Bayern until we're 4-0 down? WTF? Not to mention he's made other mistakes, like overplaying Xavi, Messi (he can handle a shitload of games, but he still shouldn't have played the full 90 minutes against Celta after the game in Bolivia), and Alba. Along with not giving youngsters enough playing time and he could have rotated a bit more. I may be being a bit harsh on him though, given that he was away for a good part of the season because of cancer and all. I still think we should get a new coach though.
All in all, I'd say the season was fair. Winning the league (possibly reaching the 100 points record) isn't a complete failure, but this season certainly wasn't a big success due to our shit performance in big games.
Also, Tito's been meh this season. Tactics and motivation are a huge part of why we were so shit in big games (aside from the Milan game, props to Tito for that one though). Guess whose job those are? He's also been shit with subs a lot of the time, I mean, not bringing on any subs against Bayern until we're 4-0 down? WTF? Not to mention he's made other mistakes, like overplaying Xavi, Messi (he can handle a shitload of games, but he still shouldn't have played the full 90 minutes against Celta after the game in Bolivia), and Alba. Along with not giving youngsters enough playing time and he could have rotated a bit more. I may be being a bit harsh on him though, given that he was away for a good part of the season because of cancer and all. I still think we should get a new coach though.
All in all, I'd say the season was fair. Winning the league (possibly reaching the 100 points record) isn't a complete failure, but this season certainly wasn't a big success due to our shit performance in big games.
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This is Tito's first season as a coach plus the additional injury and health issues factored a lot. All of you cules have put your expectations so high after pep era, it's shocking. Every season we can't achieve like that. But the continuity of still achieving a lot of important things like Liga is indeed magical and proves that we really had a good season.
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