11 - Ousmane Dembélé - V1

Ronaldinho10

New member
Would bin the 4-4-2 in the CL if we struggle heavily against Chelsea and in danger of bouncing out.

I hope Valverde starts

Iniesta - Rakitic - Busquets - Paulinho

To see if it truly will work well. No Gomes pls.

Been calling for this for a while.. only option I see seeing as Coutinho won't be able to start in CL.. If EV starts gomes vs Chelsea were done.
 

gatsu

New member
Would bin the 4-4-2 in the CL if we struggle heavily against Chelsea and in danger of bouncing out.

I hope Valverde starts

Iniesta - Rakitic - Busquets - Paulinho

To see if it truly will work well. No Gomes pls.

Gomes over Paulinho a million time.
 

BBZ8800

Senior Member
Time to end the 4-4-2 or "workhorse" experiment and switch back to the 4-3-3. In recent weeks teams have figured out the 4-4-2 by cutting off passes from the fullbacks into the box and with the fullbacks being isolated the formation is dead.

4-4-2 has got us to the brink of the domestic double but hasn't worked nearly as well the the past few weeks. If we keep using it we will only drop more points and will likely be knocked out of the Champions League. The 4-3-3 won us two trebles, so why did we switch to the 4-4-2, because we didn't have the players for the system. Did you forget how well the 4-3-3 was working for us at the start of the season? We were thoroughly dominating teams and contrary to what some may think we were just as solid defensively. The 4-4-2 is starting to break down and instead of sitting around and waiting for it to collapse and jeopardize our season, we should be proactive and take preventative measures.

The 4-4-2 didn't provide us any "balance", maybe in comparison to last season's 4-3-3 with Lucho, but the 4-3-3 Valverde started the season with was even better. The 4-4-2 is a step down from Valverde's 4-3-3 and it doesn't improve our defense that much either.

Lol.
We didn't play our classic 442 in the last few weeks at all.

Coutinho-Iniesta is not a classic 442.
Iniesta-Dembele is not a 442.
Any formation with Suarez-Paco-Messi is not EV's 442 but something else.

So:
1. it is not that teams have figured out our 442
2. we have simply abandoned our 442 to try to put Coutinho, Dembele and Iniesta in the same lineup
 
M

MessiCam

Guest
Lol.
We didn't play our classic 442 in the last few weeks at all.

Coutinho-Iniesta is not a classic 442.
Iniesta-Dembele is not a 442.
Any formation with Suarez-Paco-Messi is not EV's 442 but something else.

So:
1. it is not that teams have figured out our 442
2. we have simply abandoned our 442 to try to put Coutinho, Dembele and Iniesta in the same lineup
I want Valverde to play your workhorse 4-4-2 in the Champions League against Chelsea so bad.
 

Raketa10

Senior Member
As I said before, I really believe this kid can be Balon d'Or candidate one day but I don't expect anything from him this season. Even If he wasn't injured I doubt we would have seen best from him this year. He needs time to adapt plus he is only 20 years old so get off his back. The only problem is his price tag and that will hunt him forever. I just hope he is mentally capable of carrying that burden otherwise this could break him.

As you can see even Coutinho has problem to adapt and he is one of the worlds best in his position. We will for sure see much better displays from Coutinho and Dembele next season.

I can recall few people doubting Umtiti in his first few months, Suarez was also struggling in the beginning, Neymar first season also wasn't that good, Modric also had tough time in Madrid, so that's perfectly normal. Every player, regardless of how god is he, needs few months to adapt so be patient, stop bitching and support your players like true fans do.
 
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Neimax

New member
As I said before, I really believe this kid can be Balon d'Or candidate one day but I don't expect anything from him this season. Even If he wasn't injured I doubt we would have seen best from him this year. He needs time to adapt plus he is only 20 years old so get off his back. The only problem is his price tag and that will hunt him forever. I just hope he is mentally capable of carrying that burden otherwise this could break him.

As you can see even Coutinho has problem to adapt and he is one of the worlds best in his position. We will for sure see much better displays from Coutinho and Dembele next season.

I can recall few people doubting Umtiti in his first few months, Suarez was also struggling in the beginning, Neymar first season also wasn't that good, Modric also had tough time in Madrid, so that's perfectly normal. Every player, regardless of how god is he, needs few months to adapt so be patient, stop bitching and support your players like true fans do.

Great post, at least some people in here are rational people. He needs his time to adapt and won’t reach his top level this season, but I‘m sure that he could be an important factor regarding the CL. Even if he won‘t perform worldclass overall he will definitely cause huge problems for the opponents because of his speed and everyone who saw him at Dortmund knows that he has a huge ability to create chances. Paulinho and Dembélé will be our fourth midfielder in the CL and even though Dembélé won‘t reach his full potential, he will be a very important player for us in these last months of the season.
 
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He is the best talent in the world and at worst in the top 3. How many other youngsters have scored over 30 goals+assists at the age of 19, let alone at a new club in an entirely different league? I will be quoting all the egregious knee-jerk reactions in this thread once Dembele becomes a superstar.

Give up on him now after 5 matches and 2 brutal injuries at your own peril, just don't celebrate him once he starts doing great things.
 

MagIX

Senior Member
It is not a question of doubiting Dembele or Couthino.
We can play only with 11 players and we have to play with a balance: Messi is the goat, that does not mean that if I could, I would have 11 messi on the pitch.
At the moment we have a 4-4-2 that is working very well, I would't change it only because now, in the middle of the season, Dembele and Courthino are avalaible.
Iniesta, Couthino, Suarez, Messi, Dembele.... they can't play all togheter. We will have to sacrifice (or retire) someone
Step by step, week after week, month after month (mainly next season) we will integrate Dem and Cou, we have to change the formation, give them time to adapt, make adjustments, refine the system... all this need time. There is no urgency to do this now.
 

Xaviniesta

Senior Member
He is the best talent in the world and at worst in the top 3. How many other youngsters have scored over 30 goals+assists at the age of 19, let alone at a new club in an entirely different league? I will be quoting all the egregious knee-jerk reactions in this thread once Dembele becomes a superstar.

Give up on him now after 5 matches and 2 brutal injuries at your own peril, just don't celebrate him once he starts doing great things.

Mbappe is the best talent in the world though
 

bastardo

Member
Everybody needs to relax. He's only played like what? 3 games. I feel like nowadays there is way more scrutiny on players in general, possibly due to the rise of the internet. Full highlights on any well-known player is just few clicks away (for better or worse) for anyone to scrutinise any little mistakes they make. Young players from the past would have been slaughtered in todays era due to being "turnover machines".
 

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