21 - Frenkie de Jong

Can't expect much from him tonight. But another silent big match. He'll be a great player once Barca builds a strong team or he gets his transfer, but he's not a leader who shines when things don't look bright.

It will hurt when he asks to leave in 1-2 years to compete for trophies

He is in his prime age now (24) so if he thinks of leaving, it is normal.

Only a handful of players are able to impact big matches when there are many things lacking around them.

I wouldn't oppose selling him if we could use the money effectively.

But we would probably sign Jenson Button.

I have to say, it's annoying, that he can't bring up the "next level" game to these big games. Sometimes you would think he shows up and wins the game for us, but it hasn't happened yet.

Guys FDJ is an amazing player and we are lucky to have him.

I feel he was here for an FCB ala Messi, if we stay like this he will sure be out asap.

I don't think ANY team will put 100m on him, even if he is amazing teams can get the job done with a 25m player.

Stop expecting him to turn games around, those player comes once each 20 years + we were lucky to have two of them in the same era.

FDJ has signed a 6-year extension with lower wages two months after the 2-8 loss when he already knew what situation we're in. Surely, he probably didn't expect Messi to leave but I think he was aware there might be some tough years ahead of us.

I don't believe he's thinking about leaving now. Will surely also stay around if Laporta would appoint Ten Hag next year (not saying he should but there were rumours he's his prefered candidate to replace Koeman; would probably be an improvement but I have my doubts about him as well). Now if we'll still be highly uncompetitive against teams like Bayern in 2023 or so then I could see Frenkie starting to think about leaving.

But there is still a big difference between players starting to think about leaving and being internally quietly unhappy to publicly demanding to leave and actually be sold. Clubs have kept want-away players before. We usually don't (and we actually have the opposite problem in recent years that players we'd want to offload don't want to leave ) which I think it's the right decision. It's better to have money to bring players that want to play for the club than keep those who don't want anymore. But in Frenkie's case even in 2023 he'd still have 3 years left on his contract. He's a true professional and would still give his best even if he wouldn't be totally happy to stay imo so it would be fully up to the club (and what offers we'd get) to decide if (and when) they want to sell or not. Which would also depend on how important they'd believe he still is to the team at that point and how close we're to become consistently competitive against top teams again.

Another World Class performance against a Great Team. Nope

Frustrating to see him weak yet again vs a big team.

Just not as good as I thoughr he was.

Miles behind the likes of Kimmich, De Bruyne

The whole team is weak vs Bayern, not only him.

Yet to truly take a “step forward” as Valdano puts it but tonight having a relic like busquets in the side causes a ripple effect for the rest of the midfield

Hardly weak. It was a one man midfield. Pedri and bousquets are invisible men.

iniestaGOAT said:

Hardly weak. It was a one man midfield. Pedri and bousquets are invisible men.

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He is no better than Pedri or Busquest in this game

He is a player who will shine when the team effort works well like he did in ajax but here at barca he wont get support. COuld be the third season in a row in which he wont win a la liga title.