I think this season was messed up during the transfer window, and with our current squad I don't see us succeeding. The transfer window made no sense because on one hand we brought in Lucho to change up the system and reinvigorate our team, to refresh the stale "tiki-taka" style and bring something new to the table, but on the other hand we sold two world-class players in Alexis and Fabregas (as well as Song, who is a great player) because they didn't fit our system. As a result, our squad is weak and even our starting XI often leaves to be desired. Sure, our front three is world-class, but what happens if someone gets injured, or isn't in great form, or is serving a ban for I don't know, biting someone? We're left with an extremely raw Munir, the slightly less raw Sandro, and Pedro, who's freaking Pedro. In midfield, we have Iniesta, Busquets, and Rakitic, which on paper is decent until you realize Iniesta has no competition and is on the wrong side of 30, Busquets has played every game for the past 4 years and is a dead man walking, and Rakitic is, like I said before the start of the season, a jack-of-all-trades who would never be called world-class. Our back four has actually been solid this season, and I'm more or less happy with it, although I wouldn't have bought Vermaelen considering just how many injuries he's had. But I like what Lucho has done in that area of the field.
However, in the other parts, we've set ourselves up for failure. Instead of spending a ton of money for Suarez, we should have kept Fabregas, Alexis, and Song, bought Rakitic, Mathieu, and another attacker who would be content to sit on the bench but who would provide goals when called upon, and not be a waste of space like Pedro or an extremely inconsistent youngster like Munir. Roberto and Rafinha should have been the ones sent out on loans, as we need to find our identity now instead of playing youngsters who have potential to be good in the future. Then our front three would be Neymar-Messi-Alexis, which in my opinion is close to good enough to Suarez that it doesn't matter anyways, and we would actually have an option from the bench. But it would be our midfield that would really be stacked, with Cesc and Iniesta to provide that world-class attacking quality, Rakitic and Song to be used wherever required, Busquets and Mascherano to be our defensive mids, and rotated, and Xavi played in a role similar to this season, where his experience is still at our club and he's breathing down the others' necks, but he isn't starting every game.
The most important part of that squad would be the variety of it. Right now, our formation and starting XI is pretty much locked in. We're going to play Suarez, Messi, and Neymar regardless, which locks us into a 4-3-3, which locks Busquets or Mascherano in as a defensive mid, Iniesta because he's easily better than anyone else, and then Rakitic or Xavi. With that squad, we could play Cesc or Iniesta or both of them, or Song or Rakitic or Xavi, or 4 midfielders and Messi and Neymar or a 4-2-3-1 or whatever we wanted. Teams wouldn't know what to expect and that would be the redefining of our style that we originally wanted when we hired Lucho.
