Ernesto Valverde

I would give credit to Valverde for using that midfield trio.. but.. the majority of random users on a football forum have being dying to see that midfield from the start. It has taken him too long to realise the potential we have.
He must get credit for using Fati thought, not an easy decision.

P.S.
1. We need to somehow get some of this home form on our away games. The difference in play is massive, as always.

2. With Neymar's signing Fati would be uknown. Good thing he stayed at PSG.

That's the weirdest thing though!

Is there any other team out there with such a crazy discrepancy between Home and Away (not the series ) games???

That's just crazy!!! Barca is so unique lol

Maybe it's a Feng Shui or mysterious Chakra thang or smthg in the grass

Our better signing would be a psychotherapist. We are a different beast at home. And that goes back to the pep years.

So after 3 seasons it's still about the transitional period, sounds about right.

Tackle would deny that the sky is blue to defend Valverde.

ini4ever said:

What, transitional period?
Did we just replace the old core with youngsters the last two seasons I'm not aware of? Oh, XIs' average age in his last season was 29. Nice transitional period right.

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Exactly. Man basically kept the status quo and overplayed the veterans in the last 2 years. It only seems to have gotten to his senses a bit this season, and mind you it's still early, he can totally chicken out and play the veterans again in the future, as it's his nature to do so.

Valverde will be remembered for his La Liga wins during a time where Madrid and Altetico were crap, and for the complete embarrassments in Europe. Trophy-wise he is not the most terrible manager ever, but in pretty much every other way, and if you look at the budget, and resources he has had in terms of signings, he is probably the worst Barca manager since before Rijkaard's time.

Anyway, it's not that important how he will be remembered. What's important is to get rid of him for next season.

On paper, this year's squad is much stronger than last year.

From what we have seen until now:

[*]We can play good football when the right pieces are put together. Valverde seems kind of different than the last two years. The reasons for this are not clear. He tries to please the fans (Fati) and doesn't seem so stubborn on using certain players. It might take him a couple of games to act on things, but one could attribute that to giving second chances or something. Alena is an exception as he didn't have a second chance but Sergi got plenty.

*We do have good (some really good, some decent) young players in our roster like Arthur, FDJ, Lenglet, Perez, Ansu, Semedo, Alena, Puig (No Dembele for me, I have given up until he proves us all wrong). People shouldn't diminish our young players as mediocre and bad. It's unfair and done only to exonerate the manager of his responsibilities and faults.

*Our defending has gotten worse. We can't keep a clean sheet even when we concede very few attacks. Pique seems to have some of the blame for this but not for lack of trying. Maybe it's circumstantial, time will tell.

*Busi-FDJ-Arthur midfield can be very efficient against "mickey mouse la liga teams" it seems. Even without our main weapon in the squad, they don't seem to have a problem controlling the game, avoiding pressure, making runs, shooting, and making through balls and key passes. Lampardic is not instrumental and necessary for this kind of games. Is he necessary for anything?

*I can't stress this point enough! The discrepancy between our home and away game's performance. Home advantage is actually a thing, but Barcelona have taken it to another level. We can play great at home and neutral grounds but get outclassed even by arguably lesser teams away. This one is not on Valverde. This mentality has been with us even from the 2008 team. If we could play even at 70% of our abilities on away ties we would have won much more CLs in the last 10 years. Why this happens is really beyond me, but it must be addressed at some point.

JohnN said:

*I can't stress this point enough! The discrepancy between our home and away game's performance. Home advantage is actually a thing, but Barcelona have taken it to another level. We can play great at home and neutral grounds but get outclassed even by arguably lesser teams away. This one is not on Valverde. This mentality has been with us even from the 2008 team. If we could play even at 70% of our abilities on away ties we would have won much more CLs in the last 10 years. Why this happens is really beyond me, but it must be addressed at some point.

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+1

I would add 2 things:
1. since always, even in 90s and early 00s, we were always a HOME team in Europe.
On Camp Nou, we can win 4:0 against anyone.
On the other hand, on away matches, we can lose 0:2 or 0:3, ALSO against ANYONE.

For a short period of time, those problems were masked due to our insane quality during Pep.
But now, it is slowly coming back.

I have checked all of our Champions league KO matches results from 2008 till today, home and today.
Results are really interesting:

**************************
HOME:
2009:
Lyon 5:2
Bayern 4:0
Chelsea 0:0

2010:
Stuttgart 4:0
Arsenal 4:1
Inter 1:0

2011:
Arsenal 3:1
Shakhtar 1:0
Real 1:1

2012:
Leverkusen 7:1
Milan 3:1
Chelsea 2:2

2013:
Milan 4:0
Psg 1:1
Bayern 0:3

2014:
City 2:0
Atletico 1:1

2015:
City 1:0
Psg 2:0
Bayern 3:0

2016:
Arsenal 3:1
Atletico 2:1

2017:
Psg 6:1
Juve 0:0

2018:
Chelsea 3:0
Roma 4:1

2019:
Lyon 5:1
Man Utd 3:0
Liverpool 3:0

*************************
AWAY:
2009:
Lyon 1:1
Bayern 1:1
Chelsea 1:1

2010:
Stuttgart 1:1
Arsenal 2:2
Inter 3:1

2011:
Arsenal 2:1
Shakhtar 0:1
Real 0:2

2012:
Bayer 1:3
Milan 0:0
Chelsea 1:0

2013:
Milan 2:0
Psg 2:2
Bayern 4:0

2014:
City 0:2
Atletico 1:0

2015:
City 1:2
Psg 1:3
Bayern 3:2

2016:
Arsenal 0:2
Atletico 2:0

2017:
Psg 4:0
Juve 3:0

2018:
Chelsea 1:1
Roma 3:0

2019:
Lyon 0:0
Man Utd 0:1
Liverpool 4:0

**************************************************
**************************************************

Home TOTAL:
29 matches:
22 wins
6 draws
1 defeat (Bayern 0:3 in 2013')
= goals ratio: 78:19

Away:
29 matches
8 wins
9 draws
12 defeats
= Goals ratio: 44:29 for our opponents

Percentage of wins at home=76%
Percentage of wins away=28%

Percentage of defeats at home=3%
Percentage of defeats away=41%

Goals scored per match at home=2,69
Goals scored per match away=1,00

Goals conceded per match at home=0,66
Goals conceded per match away=1,52

2. the 2nd thing, regarding La Liga and hot and cold matches, this season (and Lucho's 3rd season) are starting to remind me of early 2000's and Gaspart's era.
In those days, we were able to win 7:0 or 5:0 at home (or in one match) against anyone, ONLY to lose 0:3 in the next round to Osasuna or Malaga.
Then, 7 days later, we would trash Atletico 5:0. Only again to play 0:0 against a crappy team 3 days later.
So, we were playing hot and cold all the time.
We had a quality to win against anyone, but we didn't have consistency.
Some guys will now say: that is a coach's job.
Ok.
But, imo, it is way deeper. It often happens when a team is complacent, too old, or when a team has mental issues (not too much confidence), or when we lack leaders who will lead a team in tough 0:0 away matches.
In the last 6 rounds:
1. we played bad against Napoli
2. then we played awesome against Napoli 3 days later. Frenkie-Roberto-Alena played like 3 aliens.
3. a few days later against Bilbao, we were very bad again
4. against Betis, we played like aliens again
5. a few days later, against Osasuna, we played like dead grannies again
6. yesterday against Valencia, we played awesome again

So, the point is not to win 5:0 or 7:0, but to win CONSISTENTLY.
2:0 and 2:1 wins are better than 7:0 and then 1:1.
I just checked some results from 2000/01 season, and here are some examples:
Deportivo:Barca 2:0
Sociedad:Barca 0:6
Barca:Real 2:0
Mallorca:Barca 2:0
Barca:Numancia 1:1

We can win 6:0 against Sociedad and win against Real Madrid, only to lose points to Mallorca and Numancia.
Or these results later from the same season:
Valencia:Barca 0:1
Malaga:Barcelona 0:0
Barcelona:Bilbao 7:0
That was a wow match, and people thought: we will start winning again...
Only to lose to Racing Santander 4:0 a few days later, lol.

Here are 2 videos from that season, 7:0 against Bilbao and 0:4 against Racing Santander.
We were extremely hot and cold. Jekyll and Hyde.
Bilbao 7:0: What is worse, we played awesome and could have scored 12-13 goals on that night:

Only to play like EV's Barca only a few days later, as if we fielded a totally different team:

My bet for a current hot and cold displays are:
1. EV
2. complacent and old core of a team
3. no real leaders in a team (and that was even worse without Messi and Suarez). Griezmann is not our leader in this moment.

MTL_Barca said:

Transitional period? That will be the next coach if anything. Xavi got replaced during Luchos time here, same for Alves and Valdes and Mascherano too although he stayed another 6 months. Messi, Busi, Pique will probably still be starters when Valverde leaves because i think there is very little chance he stays another 1-2 years after this season. So it only was Iniesta, and right now it's Raki and maybe Suarez besides that it's more like the final years of the old core but this far not really a big transition. I think thats more something for the next coach and next board, by the time around 2020-2021. After the current 31-32 year old players are gone there will be no starter of Pep era left and even of MSN triple winning team there will be only Alba (also 31+ by that time), ter Stegen, Umtiti (who isn't looking like he'll be for long right now) and...well Neymar if he comes back. So i'd say that will be the big transition that has to be done.

For the game yesterday credit to Ernie for starting the youngsters and barcaforums favorite midfield, but after so many disappointments it's hard to get excited. The fear he'll eventually fall back to things like playing Sergi on the wing and Raki-Busi-Vidal midfield is always there

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That's why I wanted either Vidal or Rakitic sold. That midfield gave me PTSD last season.


Vidal and Rakitic, neither known for technique, quality on the ball or are remotely comfortable to being pressed, in the worst moment of their careers playing alongside a Busquets who is showing signs of physical decline that get exponentially exacerbated when paired with technically deficient midfield partners (a la Vidal & Ivan).


Just awful. It must have been a case of Christmas-come-very-early to Klopp when he saw that team-sheet back in May. I bet he couldn't stop smiling.


Hopefully we've moved on from that now. One of them here and there it's not the end of the world since they stayed, but definitely not both especially beside Busquets.

Percentage of wins at home=76%
Percentage of wins away=28%

Percentage of defeats at home=3%
Percentage of defeats away=41%

Goals scored per match at home=2,69
Goals scored per match away=1,00

Goals conceded per match at home=0,66
Goals conceded per match away=1,52

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One could argue that we are way above the average expected wins on home games and close to the average expected wins away.
But we are considered a top team, not an average one. That's why it feels we are so bad away from Camp Nou.

I can't understand how this mentality has being inherited by all our squads through the years.

LMAO @ all Valverde fans coming out of the woodwork after one decent performance in a year!

The cult is still alive!

Horatio said:

In retrospect Valverde will be remembered as the coach that guided Barca during its transitional period. And with 2 la ligas and a copa and who knows what happens this season people will say he did a good job.

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Transitional how?

Aaaaaaaaaaand his job is safe.

It's wasn't us playing "good at home", Valencia literally never pressed us, not even 1 time, doesn't make sense.

George_Costanza said:

LMAO @ all Valverde fans coming out of the woodwork after one decent performance in a year!

The cult is still alive!

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Decent performance against a team who just fired their manager. It was the first game for the new guy.

Leo_Messi said:

As for giving chances to Fati and Pérez, it is not like he had a lot of options NOT to use them given the injury crisis to almost every single of our attacking players with the exception of Griezmann

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He could have pushed for Coutinho to stay, or let Rafinha stay and play with him and Roberto on wings, or played with 4 midfielder, or played Alena as an attacker.
Nevermind he could have gone for other youth players, like Abil Ruiz for example rather than going for Perez and Fati, the later who didn't even play for Barca B.
He had alternatives, but he choose the right one, despite one of them being very surprising to say at least.
He clearly had an eye on those 2 as 5th and 6th options from the beginning tbh. Regardless of our opinion on him as a coach but he should take credit for that.