Ernesto Valverde - V1

Lelouch vi Britannia said:

Those of you defending Valverde, I ask again, how do you justify:

-Playing Pique through injury

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Did you see the video? The medical team said it was fine, he subbed him off vs Girona, didn't play vs. Las Palmas.

Doctors gave Pique a green light, he himself wanted to play.

But: Pique's injury is Valverde's fault.

-Playing Paulinho/Gomes/Vidal over Dembele

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What had Dembele done so far to be an undisputable starter?

That aside, he has that "confidence issues", which are also allegedly Valverde's fault. If he had played today, two things could've happened.
1) he'd cause havoc, use his pace for good, dribble himself out of tricky situations involving tight spaces...
or 2) he'd lose the ball often, not being able to dribble, couldn't cope with the pressure Atletico imposed et cetera

So, how would that influence his confidence? With media calling him a fraud?

Also, did you notice how our defensive strategy worked? Avoiding their pressure traps?
Maybe he wasn't ready for the match in that aspect.

I don't know why he didn't play, but tbh, I think a coach has every right to decide.

-Valverde’s treatment of Semedo

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not a fan of it, neither

but Roberto has shown more going forward which was crucial for us

also, Semedo has played quite a few matches

-Running Iniesta into the ground when we have Coutinho, who is not available in the CL, meaning we sorely need a fresh Iniesta against Chelsea.

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Iniesta almost never plays full 90 minutes.
Last time he played before Las Palmas? Chelsea 10 days before.

Injuries happen if you play too much but also if you don't. It's crucial for Iniesta to keep it warm.

You can't connect (you can, but cannot prove) his injury to his playing time, so it's not on Valverde.

JamDav1982 said:

You just sound angry about being wrong that Barca will fall behind Atletico and get knocked out by Chelsea.

Predict the worst and be smug if happens. Thats all you are about.

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If Valverde grows some balls and starts Dembele, we will win. Comfortably. That’s what I want to see. Then I’ll back off on the criticism.

If he starts 2 of Pualinho/Vidal/Gomes, we will get embarrassed.

Lelouch vi Britannia said:

If Valverde grows some balls and starts Dembele, we will win. Comfortably. That’s what I want to see.

If he starts 2 of Pualinho/Vidal/Gomes, we will get embarrassed.

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Doesnt mean to say Barca are without a doubt fucked if dont.

Well his setup from the beginning was good. In big games away, if everybody's healthy we should actually play this:

------------------MATS-----------------
Semedo-----Pique-----Umtiti-----Alba
Roberto-Rakitić-Busquets-Cou/Iniesta
-------------Messi----Suarez-----------

But I'm still baffled with the Gomes substitution, who hasn't played for a month and everyone knows he's shit replacing a creative midfielder. We also lost control over the game at that moment.

Winning the CL is a exception, not the normality.
Easy to say that if he don't win the CL, he has failed, is a coach that is nothing worth. Only one wins, that doen't mean that all others are shit.

At the beginning of the season everyone expected that we would have won 0 titles (even worse after RM trashed us).
Instead we have risen up ! without Neymar, Dembele injured, Coutinho in January !! GREAT ! we trashed RM at Bernabeu.
With the available material, EV did and he's doing a great job!
Some merit must be recognized.

Wolfe said:

.... which is absolutely what you need to do? You've conceded 13 goals. It's March. I can't think of the stat off the top of my head, but it seems to be your team's best defensive record since Pep era when organisation and personnel from back to front was at its all time high. Since Puyol left you inserted Mascherano as the organiser next to Pique to keep him in check and it wasn't entirely successful. Only Atleti conceded less goals out of Europe's top 5 leagues. Defense wins trophies. Not one, but multiple ones. Balanced defense-offense makes you undefeated and takes you to where Valverde took you from imminent crisis and first legit beatdown you've received at the hands of Madrid since 2008.

You may not like it, but if in June you finish as invincibles with a treble (which this squad is absolutely capable of) I guarantee you, none of the shit stirring that is currently occurring because "muh, we only scored 70 when we should have scored 90!" will ever take place.

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Maybe some of us don't think that we are that great in defense despite the record. There was some interesting stat a while back which said that even though we conceded very few goals, the opponents have often had more goal scoring chances than us.

Look at the Eibar game a few weeks ago. You give a good attacking team those chances and they put 2 goals past you with ease. We ended up not receiving a single goal after a poor game in defense.

Valverde's tactics will prove to be very successful if/when he wins CL playing like that. Even decisive I'd say, because I don't think we're good enough to win the CL this year playing very offensive football.

Lelouch vi Britannia said:

If Valverde grows some balls and starts Dembele, we will win. Comfortably. That’s what I want to see. Then I’ll back off on the criticism.

If he starts 2 of Pualinho/Vidal/Gomes, we will get embarrassed.

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We are already getting embarrassed as a fanbase by your posts.

Ursegor said:

We are already getting embarrassed as a fanbase by your posts.

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Lelouch vi Britannia said:

If Valverde grows some balls and starts Dembele, we will win. Comfortably.

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How do you know? What has Dembele shown so far to be considered Messiah who'll take a game from "getting embarrassed" to "winning comfortably"?

Did you use to say the same for Neymar? vs. Juve, vs. PSG away... what's the difference?

serghei said:

Maybe some of us don't think that we are that great in defense despite the record. There was some interesting stat a while back which said that even though we conceded very few goals, the opponents have often had more goal scoring chances than us.

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So what? Not conceding when you should have is a skill and far from always the magical luck. Mental management of the game. You weather the storm. Sometimes you get bit, more often times you don't. Risk and reward. Drawing a game that you should have lost (Chelsea game 2 weeks ago) is far better than drawing a game that you should have comfortably won (Chelsea semifinal in 2012). It's 15x better to take the pressure, resist it and come out on top than apply it and be tremendously unlucky/fail. The former always feels better than the latter. Unless you're a fucked up Barca/Madrid malcontent fan who always expects perfectionism and always looks for something to improve.

serghei said:

Maybe some of us don't think that we are that great in defense despite the record. There was some interesting stat a while back which said that even though we conceded very few goals, the opponents have often had more goal scoring chances than us.

Look at the Eibar game a few weeks ago. You give a good attacking team those chances and they put 2 goals past you with ease. We ended up not receiving a single goal after a poor game in defense.

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Barca were shown recently to have the best figures for quality of chances created against them of any team in europes top three leagues.

This idea that Barca have been lucky to not concede a lot more does not add up.

Joan Laporta said:

How do you know? What has Dembele shown so far to be considered Messiah who'll take a game from "getting embarrassed" to "winning comfortably"?

Did you use to say the same for Neymar? vs. Juve, vs. PSG away... what's the difference?

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he watched his dortmund highlights

Hamzah said:

The majority on this forum are naive. They expect a manager to walk in and play pep era football even though the team was in crisis, and are complaining about winning. We'd all like to play nice football but in the short term stabilising the ship and getting back to winning ways is what counts and valverde has done that. He improved the defence and got the squad norale and mentality back.

Starting from next season, Dembele and coutinho will be integrated and there may be more additions. Barca can go back to playing nice football building in the winning foundation of this seasons work.

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Can this exxagerrated shit stop? No one who is criticising valverde is criticizing him for not playing as good as pep. He has his fair share of problems. We don't play that great for starters. And no its not because we don't play as good as pep's but because we play nowhere near that pep's side. And it isn't that tough to grind out results when you have such an amazing team. Just look at today. If not for that messi magical moment what would have hapenned? And that was totally an indvidual win you can't argue there. He took a free kick and scored. No managerial tactical prowess involved. Now take that away for a second and look at it objectively. We didn't creat much and were playing safe all game. Horrible subs. His lineups has been consistently atrocious all season long. Iniesta got injured by overplaying and its unbelievable some geniusses think otherwise. Terrible man management, we were all happy with the arrival of coutinho not just because he is a great player but because it would mean some rest for iniesta but a man shouldn't dream so big. We were defensively sloppy all game. So many mistakes, so many errors. Take that goal out and look at it objectively.

Same shit against chelsea. We were sleeping all game. And at the end there were defenders saying past barca sides also struggled which is just blind support and a lazy argument. We may not get a good end result back then but overall gameplay was much better than this.

EV is defnitely culpable. Looking back at the supercopa loss, yes he has done a lot of good things but he has done a lot of noob mistakes too and definitely can be criticized.

That was not a 'totally individual win' from Messi at all.

Shit like that is what makes no sense.

Wolfe said:

So what? Not conceding when you should have is a skill and far from always the magical luck. Mental management of the game. You weather the storm. Sometimes you get bit, more often times you don't. Risk and reward. Drawing a game that you should have lost (Chelsea game 2 weeks ago) is far better than drawing a game that you should have comfortably won (Chelsea semifinal in 2012). It's 15x better to take the pressure, resist it and come out on top than apply it and be tremendously unlucky/fail. The former always feels better than the latter. Unless you're a fucked up Barca/Madrid malcontent fan who always expects perfectionism and always looks for something to improve.

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What you say is true if you can really master that flexibility, and go in and out different approaches during the game based on the result. I guess it can be interpreted as a good thing or a flaw depending on a lot of factors. You can be flexible, as is being able to play in multiple ways and choose which is which based on the score mostly. Or you can be limited. For example, Atletico is more limited than flexible. And Barca can potentialy be more flexible, because they can choose to play a certain way without being forced by a lack of something.

In CL Valverde will be able to show which is it. Is he flexible, or is he limited.

serghei said:

What you say is true if you can really master that flexibility, and go in and out different approaches during the game based on the result. Everything you do can be interpreted as a good thing or a flaw. You can be flexible, which is being able to play in multiple ways and choose which is which based on the score mostly. Or you can be limited.

In CL he'll be able to show which is it. Is he flexible, or is he limited.

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He has changed the approach of Barca multiple times this season.

The CL is very strong this season and it is not going to be the ultimate decider on Barca.

If Barca win the double Valverde has done a great job from Barca were last August.