i_bleed_blaugrana
Senior Member
I'm not here to get into a pissing match over Valverde. He is a nuanced man and I have nuanced opinions on him that I have outlined in the past. To summarize, he is a utilitarian and that isn't something that will mesh well with the idealists here. We are a romantic club but if we ever really want to be truly the greatest, at some point, we as a club might need to learn what it takes to win ugly sometimes. That is the dilemma: either we go on to surpass clubs like Bayern and Milan in terms of CLs by sometimes accepting we won't always be able to play Cruyffista football or we stick to our ideals and sometimes might have to watch our rivals dominate, playing very similar football to us.
I am very split on this which is why I have a split opinion on him. When it comes to style, his game reminds me a lot of Spain under Del Bosque: nothing flashy but consistent. My issues with Valverde is we aren't consistent enough for how he sets us up and if he can't deliver on that sort of style, I'd rather us play better football at the result of being more open. I typically want our style of football and club management (promotion of La Masia, developing young players, etc.) and while Valverde kinda does that, for me this season, I only care about the CL. So if his contribution to this club is teaching us how to win ugly sometimes (defending leads, not making mistakes) for a more virtuoso coach (Xavi, Pimienta), I'll take that and maybe people need to see Valverde more for what he is and less of what we want our manager to be. We don't always play terrible football under him, but we as fans have every right to be upset when the team isn't playing at the level required and the game yesterday was a good example of that.
That's what I really came to talk about here. He really needs to figure out how to transition our new signings more and what our MF looks like sans Busquets. We made some really bad turnovers in the first half until him and Cou came on and we gotta find a MF who can at least control a match and get us out of our own half smoothly. I've always wanted to see Roberto more in MF but man he did NOT look good in the pivot yesterday which was surprising and worrying to me. Raki struggles in that role as well so at this point, he needs to keep playing around until he finds something that works. In terms of a rotation MF without Busi or Cou, maybe Raki-Arthur-Arturo?
We need better performances than yesterday though, we would have lost that match had it not been for ter Stegen bailing our asses out.
I am very split on this which is why I have a split opinion on him. When it comes to style, his game reminds me a lot of Spain under Del Bosque: nothing flashy but consistent. My issues with Valverde is we aren't consistent enough for how he sets us up and if he can't deliver on that sort of style, I'd rather us play better football at the result of being more open. I typically want our style of football and club management (promotion of La Masia, developing young players, etc.) and while Valverde kinda does that, for me this season, I only care about the CL. So if his contribution to this club is teaching us how to win ugly sometimes (defending leads, not making mistakes) for a more virtuoso coach (Xavi, Pimienta), I'll take that and maybe people need to see Valverde more for what he is and less of what we want our manager to be. We don't always play terrible football under him, but we as fans have every right to be upset when the team isn't playing at the level required and the game yesterday was a good example of that.
That's what I really came to talk about here. He really needs to figure out how to transition our new signings more and what our MF looks like sans Busquets. We made some really bad turnovers in the first half until him and Cou came on and we gotta find a MF who can at least control a match and get us out of our own half smoothly. I've always wanted to see Roberto more in MF but man he did NOT look good in the pivot yesterday which was surprising and worrying to me. Raki struggles in that role as well so at this point, he needs to keep playing around until he finds something that works. In terms of a rotation MF without Busi or Cou, maybe Raki-Arthur-Arturo?
We need better performances than yesterday though, we would have lost that match had it not been for ter Stegen bailing our asses out.
