La Liga Round 9: Barca - Girona 2-1

Offence is best defense. Raphinha’s pressing will help greatly as we will recover the ball higher up and give opponent less moments to attack.

But offside trap being so poorly carried out will still hurt us.

Raphinha should help but the team have been conceding too many goals with him also for a while and he wasn't great in games has played so far this season either.

Teams have adapted to Barcas high line and also started to man mark FDJ and Pedri and show ball to Barca full backs who are weak on ball when pressed.

Raphinha gives you options for direct passes. 2 goals in the 4-0 vs Madrid came with passes over midfield from CBs to timed runs by Raphinha who cooked the RB for pace. 2 goals vs Bayern also directly to Raphinha, 3rd and 4th. We need to get Raphinha back to last season form, fit, and ready to eat those long passes. He benefits from more space when other teams overcommit in midfield.

This doesn't mean it's ok for Pedri and De Jong to not be able to solve a 2 vs 2. If they are the players we think they are, man for man should not be enough to block them. Especially vs likes of Sevilla and Girona.

Concerning performance. Pedri was WC until he got tired and of course made the one mistake.

The solution to this ridiculously ineffective high line cannot just be PRESS HARDER PRESS HARDER. Flick has got to realise fitness levels and adjust accordingly. He's just not seeming to do it and we're quite a few games into his second season now.

Watched this game. Barca played well in spells, but good work gets undone by that very high line. It isn't working like it did at this point last season. Girona got in so often and their finishing was awful (commentator said they were near bottom of the league for shot conversion). The thing is, they don't even have to work or do anything special to get a race against the goalkeeper - it's just one man holding his position, waiting, then a ball in behind and he's away. Faster attackers llke Mbappe won't be caught and will have a clean shot.

Lovely goals by Pedri and Witsel, though. The goal to win it was nice, but you cannot rely on late winners after the opposition miss sitters every week.

The warning signs are there and surely Flick cannot continue to ignore them? Barca are capable of playing beautiful football sometimes, but it's undone by mistakes and that high line. It didn't cost them at the weekend but it might in future.

Exactly. It's not hard for LaLiga level player to make a through pass if there's time and space. Barca isn't good enough taking away the time right now and space.

I saw this website predicting a 2-1 win for this match, which was what I was expecting too.
Hopefully we get back to winning ways after the last match