Ernesto Valverde

Finally doing these things right shouldn't be big news but with Valverde it is, that already says a lot about him.

Not playing Busi-Raki over and over and over and over again and giving minutes to la masia players when 3 forwards are injured shouldn't be something special that has to be celebrated.

Some members in delirium since we managed to beat almighty Betis at Camp Nou!

BBZ8800 said:

This is why I am not writting off Suarez and Lampard yet, like you.

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- There is a difference between that, and writing off Griezmann. You wrote off Griezmann as a 9 after a few preseason games. I am not claiming he will work there 100%, but we should keep on trying it out.
- Suarez has a role to play here, but not as the undisputed starter you make him out to be.
- Lampard will hopefully not be here much longer.

Griezmann was not playing as classic No.9 today. He was playing more like a false 9. We"ll see what happens when Messi comes back but he won't able to play so deep with Messi in the team and that could create some problems.

This piece of shit embarrassed us in the CL twice in a row. The only way to make up for that is win the CL. Until then, keep the pitchforks out. Wasn't that good today anyway. Just better than you'd expect him to be.

If he does win the CL this season, I will get a Valverde avatar for 6 months.

BBZ8800 said:

Horrible?
No improvements?
Don't play youngsters?

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how long have you waited to post that? lets give it a few more matches as we've seen with dear Ernie its usually 1 step forward and about 10 steps back

credit for bringing on Fati, i liked all his subs today. and no Rakitic!

BBZ8800 said:

Till the minute 40, we played the same as against Bilbao.
9 sterile idiots plus Rafinha and Griezz.

Then Griezz scored two and a team transformed into a prime Pep's team.

If we will play like against Napoli and Betis 2nd half CONSISTENTLY, then awesome.

But in 2 league matches, we were sterile in attack for 130 minutes out of 180.
In that sense, apart from passing, running and pressing, I want more shooting from more players.

Frenkie doesn't shoot.
Arthur neither.
Busi neither.
Bob sometimes.

There is a high chance that a first half against Betis will repeat.

This is why I am not writting off Suarez and Lampard yet, like you.

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I agree that we have mostly played sterile so far, and surprisingly (under Valverde) we also played some somewhat dynamic football today.

I don't agree that we still need Rakitic however. He scored something like 4 goals in la liga last season. And I don't care if he has a great shot a goal every third game, this is not our problem. More shots on goal, won't make us a better team, it might ad a little bit extra threat in the final their, but only a little.
Rakitic won't make us pass the ball around faster. He won't make us press better. He won't improve our movement off the ball. He won't improve our progression of the ball in tough CL games. You are simplifying attacking way too much, we won't create more chances and be more dangerous in the final third, no matter how many shots he takes.

Rakitic is replaceable, and should be sold so he doesn't take playing time from prospects like Puig and Aleña, who already have shown that they can become valuable players in the future. We should cash whatever little we can in on Rakitic while we still can.

Alik said:

- There is a difference between that, and writing off Griezmann. You wrote off Griezmann as a 9 after a few preseason games. I am not claiming he will work there 100%, but we should keep on trying it out.
- Suarez has a role to play here, but not as the undisputed starter you make him out to be.
- Lampard will hopefully not be here much longer.

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This was Griezz's 7th game as a CF here, including a preseason.
He was quite bad in majority of games except against Napoli when Suarez played and in the 2nd half tonight.

Scoring 5 in one match and then not scoring a goal in the next 5 matches is not good since we need at least 1:0 in every match.
Remember that we were flying against Napoli, only to play a sterile football against Bilbao with the same lineup.

Even today, we have seen both sides of that team, in the first 40 minutes and in the next 50 minutes.
I am still not happy with Griezz dropping deeper than Messi and when we have no one around the box.

It worked for 50 minutes today, let's wait for a larger sample.

Lampard is irrelevant is attackers will score.
Or if Roberto will be Lampard No2.

There are some problems though: what if Semedo gets injured?
Roberto needs to go back to a RB.
Then you will have a midfield even more sterile.

That can all be masked by Messi.
But whta when Messi is not here, or when he is injured?
Then the whole team relies on Griezz and whether he will have:
1) a day when he can score 3 goals easily
2) or days when he can't score for 5 matches in a row

In the first half, we had only 2 players who were able to try a shot: Griezz and clumsy Rafinha (at times).
That sort of a team is walking on a thin line between 5:1 and 0:0.

Givenchy said:

how long have you waited to post that? lets give it a few more matches as we've seen with dear Ernie its usually 1 step forward and about 10 steps back

credit for bringing on Fati, i liked all his subs today. and no Rakitic!

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We were flying against Napoli also.
Sadly, the same lineup showed Jekill/Hyde face against Bilbao.

So, that's two awesome matches from EV in the last 2 weeks.
That's almost the same number of good matches as in the last season.

BBZ, take a day off and enjoy Barca playing well for once please.

As someone says, we've always beaten the shit of teams who couldn't defend on Camp Nou. Sorry to say but it's pretty much irrelevant. Good confidence booster but that's about it.

However. When Messi, Arthur and Suarez will be back things can improve.

They played wide open nothing to see here, if this was the first game dembele would have destroyed them, lives for those spaces.

But overall just a good confidence booster.

serghei said:

As someone says, we've always beaten the shit of teams who couldn't defend on Camp Nou. Sorry to say but it's pretty much irrelevant. Good confidence booster but that's about it.

However. When Messi, Arthur and Suarez will be back things can improve.

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Agree, the same Betis side (more or less) beat us at Camp Nou last season with all our big players including a Raki-Busi midfield. Obviously it’s one game but there’s clearly an improvement to say how many of our first 11 weren’t playing today. Also people forget lots of games last season we won but still didn’t play well at all, even at Camp Nou.

What I want to see from this team is how we react when we will face pressing aggressive teams like Bilbao next. We need to create passing options off the ball and to switch play fast.

BBZ8800 said:

Till the minute 40, we played the same as against Bilbao.
9 sterile idiots plus Rafinha and Griezz.

Then Griezz scored two and a team transformed into a prime Pep's team.

If we will play like against Napoli and Betis 2nd half CONSISTENTLY, then awesome.

But in 2 league matches, we were sterile in attack for 130 minutes out of 180.
In that sense, apart from passing, running and pressing, I want more shooting from more players.

Frenkie doesn't shoot.
Arthur neither.
Busi neither.
Bob sometimes.

There is a high chance that a first half against Betis will repeat.

This is why I am not writting off Suarez and Lampard yet, like you.

Click to expand...

Actually Betis scored against the run of play with a very poor low power ground half field pass from busquets.

We were wasteful with chances in the first half but I'd not call it sterile. The quick movement of the ball had Betis on the ropes all game

Valverde still stinks.