Messi983
Senior Member
As I've already said some time ago I believe the main problem for Suarez's struggles at start of the season was his knee injury. It's possible that he also dropped some weight but injury was what really bothered him imo. His mobility right now is light years ahead of what it was 3-4 months ago. And after starting to score regularly again his confidence has also improved a lot. Every player, even if he's a proven worldclass player will struggle when he doesn't feel well and totally confident in his own abilities. And for born goalscorers like Suarez that self-confidence is even more important. He got that back now. He'll still miss sitters because he also did that when he was in his absolute best form. And he'll still have poor touches and bad passes because he never had great technique. It's just the player he is and every Barça fan should know that by now and not criticise him every time he'll make a bad pass or miss a goal when he should score.
I agree that he deserved critics for the first 2-3 months of the season and I also thought that Paco deserved more playing time after some good performances he has shown before the injury. But at the same time I always believed that we absolutely need Suarez to get back in form before CL continues if we want to have any chance there. EV thought the same and that's why he continued to play Suarez through his struggles even when most (internet) fans wanted to bench or even sell him. I think benching him at that time wouldn't really help him because (lack of) motivation was not really his problem. He tried and tried but just couldn't do anything useful. Valverde is smart enough to recognize where the problem was so he kept faith in Suarez and looking back now I think he made the right decision.
I'm usually patient but also started to have my doubts about Suarez in early November right before his form started to improve slowly soon after NT break when he didn't travel to South America. I don't know if he did anything special during those two weeks but IIRC the team (players that didn't have NT duties) were off for 3 or 4 days. Maybe he used that time to get his mind completely of football and spend time with his family and that also helped him later to improve mentally. But as said above I think physical improvement was the main factor for him returning to form in last month.
I agree that he deserved critics for the first 2-3 months of the season and I also thought that Paco deserved more playing time after some good performances he has shown before the injury. But at the same time I always believed that we absolutely need Suarez to get back in form before CL continues if we want to have any chance there. EV thought the same and that's why he continued to play Suarez through his struggles even when most (internet) fans wanted to bench or even sell him. I think benching him at that time wouldn't really help him because (lack of) motivation was not really his problem. He tried and tried but just couldn't do anything useful. Valverde is smart enough to recognize where the problem was so he kept faith in Suarez and looking back now I think he made the right decision.
I'm usually patient but also started to have my doubts about Suarez in early November right before his form started to improve slowly soon after NT break when he didn't travel to South America. I don't know if he did anything special during those two weeks but IIRC the team (players that didn't have NT duties) were off for 3 or 4 days. Maybe he used that time to get his mind completely of football and spend time with his family and that also helped him later to improve mentally. But as said above I think physical improvement was the main factor for him returning to form in last month.
