CL | 1/8 Finals: FC Barcelona - Chelsea 4-1 agg.

What i fear is the anti-symbiosis distant Relationship we have with Madrid. We thrive they shit themselves and vice versa. Now that they won a big match in the champions league, that might have a negative psychological impact on us in this compretition. I hope this is just bad feelings.

Joan Laporta said:

We are having a break right now. But it's true, we've been out of form lately. It's quite usual for Barca, no other team in the world cares about a domestic cup more than us. Think we've done well considering the number of games played recently.

Edited the post to explain what I thought.

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Lots of the players have been rested in the cup and Barca are not going out to win it more than anyone else with similar domestic cups.

Maybe we'll get better once we get out of Hlebruary.

JamDav1982 said:

Lots of the players have been rested in the cup and Barca are not going out to win it more than anyone else with similar domestic cups.

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Lots of the player rested against lower leagues opponents, give you the 1st leg against Espanyol.
Since December, we played 4 cup games, 3 of which with our best 11. You can't deny it does make a difference. It's been like this for quite some time, bad form at the beginning of every year.

I actually think it could be the more offensive teams that can hurt us. We shouldn't have a problem shutting Chelsea out until we get a goal. After which they open up and we can score at will while still keeping them out because they just aren't that good offensively.

A team like Liverpool or Man City, on the other hand, has the tools to beat our defense and put us in a position where we have to attack, thereby exposing our rather lackluster offense. Even if we score first, they can certainly pull one (or two, or three) back. Against Chelsea, we score first and the tie is done.

Honestly, this whole idea that parking the bus is some super secret special formula to beat Barca is bullshit. Bayern (by far our greatest defeat since 2008, and it's not even close) didn't park the bus in 2013 (we didn't even get out of our own half in that game ). Nor did PSG last year. Chelsea 2012 was pure luck, could easily have been 10-0 on aggregate for us. Atletico 2014 and 16 were defensive but not to the extent of Chelsea 2012. 2014 especially, they actually looked best in the first half of the second leg when they were pressing and attacking and overrunning our midfield and hit the crossbar 4 times. Juve last year, again, defensive but what made the difference in that game was they were more clinical than us.

Ousmane Dembélé said:

What happened with Chelsea in 2012 won't happen again any time soon, we can't bank on ourselves getting that sort of luck, no team can. Also you cannot compare us to Atletico or Juventus since they're whole tactical setup and player personnel were suited perfectly to playing the type of football they did. We have the players to play attacking football and that's exactly what we should do. Atletico and Juventus came close, but in the end they lost due to their inability to score in the final. One goal is not enough in a final against elite opposition.

We CAN challenge teams playing offensive football. We couldn't do it with Neymar in 2016 or 2017 since Lucho's tactics got found out and our system was one dimensional and flawed. Go take a look at the football we were playing at the start of the season after the SuperCup under Valverde. We were playing free flowing attacking football and completely dismantling teams. Valverde fixed our tactics and we continued dominating with the 4-3-3, then injuries forced us to switch to the more rigid compact 4-4-2 in which we have done very well to be fair, but it's not good enough to win the CL. If Valverde can bring back the 4-3-3 from August-September we can beat anyone.

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He is not going to do it. Valverde's bread and butter system has always been a 4-2-3-1 and he will use it here at Barça too. I thought the team was heading back to a 4-3-3 but I've given up on that. All I can hope for is that he changes back to his workhorse 4-4-2 because we actually played decent using that system. If 2 of Gomes, Dembélé and Iniesta start against Chelsea then it will be 4-2-3-1. If Paulinho starts then it will be 4-4-2.

But I agree that attacking should be the name of the game. Not the tactics employed against Juventus away.

Can we please first wait and see how we'll do next week before we start again with this whole "we are tired because we've played 2 more Copa games than Madrid" crap?

MessiCam said:

But I agree that attacking should be the name of the game. Not the tactics employed against Juventus away.

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EV left Messi on the bench and that should tell you enough about what his preferences for that game were. He was playing for a draw because it was enough to guarantee us 1st place. And Juve was also ok with a point to stay ahead of Sporting because they knew chances for winning with 3+ goals so they could have a better head to head and possibly finish as a group winner are close to zero.

I'm sure Valverde knows how important away goals are in knockout stage so he'll want to score in London.

The results from the other PL teams City 4-0 away, Spurs 2-2 away vs Juve, Liverpool 5-0 away should be a warning to you guys not to take Chelsea lightly. Yes they don't look great currently but they are in a very competitive league.

FinBarcelonafan said:

The whole team has been off lately. Can't just blame Paulinho, but yes he's been bad. Not scoring much or doing anything productive. Heck, even Messi looked quite bad. We need some break..

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We gotta admit that Paulinho played in China and the season there started in March. He literally had no summer break and played more or less every game for them without getting subbed. Paulinho is clearly running out of energy lately. I guess this is the reason Valverde used him less in last few games to have him rested for CL where we'll definitely need him. at full power.

Real has been on an off lately and look what they did to PSG last evening.

Start dembele and if he underperform like vs getafe, we will read here how he need time and he came back from injury 2 weeks before.


He would probably end injuried, so put him last 20 minutes if barca will chase result

Dembele shouldn't start in a game like this.

We have to score in this game.

If we score first, it'll be easy. An interesting match, a real test.

DonAK said:

We have to score in this game.

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Could be wrong, but our record after 0-0 away is pretty good I think. Any draw would do for me.