Agree with Jamdav. People trying to convince themselves Neymar would cripple us just to make them feel better about him leaving or because of a personal peeve with him. It goes beyond all logic and objectivism though to assume Valverde can get the best out of all players and make them work in a system except for one player named Neymar.
And no, I am not a Ney fanboy. I am actually happy that he is gone because of the drama. But it's silly to assume a world class player like Neymar wouldn't strengthen this team.
Wouldn't be able to implement Neymar in a 4-4-2, which is the system that seems to be working the best against good teams. Neymar is not a midfielder, not a no9, and not better than Messi as a no10, 2nd striker. Simple as that. Anything else is just a guess work, purely a guess work.
Neymar was a more individualistic player who took a lot of actions on his own once he was passed the ball in positions where he can try to dribble in a 1 vs 1 or even 1 vs 2. The way we're playing atm is very different. The team is not having many individual moments from players. Only Messi has less of a structured role, the other players follow the tactics the right way.
It has nothing to do with being biased or holding grudge on Neymar. We're playing a different type of football now. More controlled, more disciplined in defense, more risk-calculated. Neymar was an amazing player, but not in these aspects. He wasn't very good in defense, was patchy in terms of effort put in (sometimes he ran well and covered the ground nicely, sometimes would just lose the ball and didn't bother to track back or spet time complaining to the ref or rolling down on the ground), took a lot of actions on his own, trying to dribble 2-3 players on his own.
