
Originally Posted by
serghei
Lol, there is absolutely no excuse not to play Arthur vs Liverpool. None. Accept it as a colossal management error from Valverde, one which probably costed him glory as a manager, and that's it.
Valverde had some excuse for playing Rakitic in his first season, because we didn't have Arthur, but Gomes, who was clearly not good enough. As soon as Arthur came in the summer of 2018 and he played great from the get go, he should've played whenever fit. Because he is simply a better mover, a better passer and a more composed player, probably the three most important attributes for playing CM at Barcelona: movement, passing, composure. Rakitic is slow and old (not just slow as in physically slow, but he thinks slow), his passing is not good enough (due to a variety of factors) and his composure is non existent (he breaks whenever even lightly pressed, and desperately looks for ways to get rid of the ball and put some teammate under pressure).
It's Arthur instead of Rakitic any fucking time, due to Rakitic registering the worst, ability wise, in Liverpool's strongest areas. That's fucking basics, you don't put in a CM whos huge flaws are a direct match with how Liverpool usually play.
So, the situation is like this.
Lucho tried to bench Rakitic, but due to some poor signings in midfield (especially Arda and Gomes) he was unable to, and just had to play Rakitic.
This situation continued in Valverde's first season. No Vidal, no Arthur, with Gomes and Paulinho (who was mediocre at CM whenever he had to play there and don't do his second striker showings). So, again, there are some mitigating factors for playing Rakitic. Last season however the over-reliance on Busi - Rakitic combo cost us the treble probably. And Valverde did have options. So it was a planning and management problem mostly.
It's good at least that, even if a year too late, Ernie found out that Arthur is simply a better midfielder than Rakitic.