Ernesto Valverde

[serghei]

The blame lies with the players. They are the ones that cross the white line and play the match. Ernesto has done brilliantly to keep the players motivated throughout the season. We had won it by Christmas with a squad of players that have won everything. Not an easy thing to do. He also has to deal with some serious clique issues within the squad, where his hands are tied and he can't do anything about it. Does he get rid of Suarez and piss off Messi? Not a chance in hell of that happening. Do you think there is another manager out there that would be able to do better with the constraints that he has to deal with? Look at Madrid. What a shite season they have had because they were not motivated because they won the CL for three years in a row. It is a really ridiculous and frankly childish attitude to put all the blame on the coach. Our winning cycle was meant to have come to an end two seasons ago and he has deified all the odds and kept us winning. He's got another year of the 'club de amigos' and then he can put out his own vision of the team. Judge him then.

No. The blame is on the players AND the manager. A lot of things are true in your comment, and this makes coaching Barcelona at this point in time a very hard task. This does not mean Valverde is not part of the problem. He very much is, because of the decisions he made. He is not a victim of the 'club de amigos'. He is one of the biggest supporters of it. This has been the case in the last 2 years. He loves veteran, experienced players, and doesn't really care about developing young talents.

It is possible for most of the things you say to be true, and also for Valverde to be unfit for a club of our stature. A manager who bottles a 4-1 lead, and then goes on and does even worse next year, is clearly out of his depth.

Yes, we have some issues in the team, and yes, Valverde added many issues on his own, on top of the existing ones. Only in this way you can have historical disasters like the Liverpool game. Leadership from players to manager is almost non existent. Many complacent veterans who don't run, and a coward manager who's out of his league among Europe's best. Add this, and also add a vision-less board and you have the 3 major flaws of this team.

Lack of workrate and intensity, average cowardly manager, and spineless, vision-less board. Put these 3 together and that's how you become a joke in CL with over a billion euros worth of players time and time again.

[serghei]

As for the CL semi's this year and the quarter's last year, we went into both return legs with a great advantage, one that a professional team of our quality should not have thrown away, certainly not both times! However, I can't see how else Ernesto could have set up the team that he sent out. As I keep saying, the players bottled it, not the coach.

Can't be serious. Before the Anfield game, when people say the line-up and that Arthur did not start, they already knew the plan was to defend, and NOT to break their press, or at least not crap ourselves every time they pressed us. He set up the team to defend and hope for something from Messi. It backfired, like a lot of people expected.

We got lucky in the first game big time, and Valverde thought he could maybe ride his luck again and get away with it. Didn't happen.

What we learned from the Liverpool game is what we already knew before the game.

1) That Liverpool are a force at home and their fans are incredible
2) That if you park the bus, trying to defend, and invite pressure from minute 1, then mistakes happen.

What we did on Anfield, is what PSG did on Camp Nou. Went in trying to preserve the lead, and the pressure got to them. Valverde is like Emery. We have a manager of Arsenal level. Or a bit under (Emery has a stronger resume).

I will be very very very curious to see where Valverde gets after Barcelona. What great teams will fight to land him. My bet is he will go back to his level, which is Bilbao-Valencia.

[soul24rage]

What we learned from that Liverpool game is that EV doesn't learn from his mistake. The Liverpool game was a carbon copy of that Roma game and it doesn't take a genius to know how Liverpool is going to play.

I really hope we win the CL but realistically it's going to be very very hard to the point of almost impossible to win it with this guy in charge if he's going to do the same thing over and over again.

[DonAndres]

Fucking nuts that people are arguing that Messi has been the anchor holding the team down and not Ernesto.

La Liga has been mediocre as hell for the past 2 seasons. RM handed us the league by December 2 seasons in a row, their worst league seasons in years. Atletico have not been impressive either. Barca got by most games with sheer cruising behind Messi's magic.

There were plenty of games we looked awful and only got bailed out by him or some other nonsense. Pretty much the one time EV rested Messi in 17/18, we lost the invincibles streak.

We've consistently been awful away in the CL under Valverde. At best we have draws or 1-0 wins, at worst we get obliterated. It's stupid to talk about "muh 7 games per year" when it's 2x that amount and Barca show consistent patterns of failure. Also laughable to suggest that there was nothing EV could've done differently. He could've almost everything differently, top to bottom. Coutinho, Rakitic, and Roberto never should've started based on who we had in the squad. Further, Lenglet/Suarez/Busi/Vidal are all players that are no longer worthy of starting for Barca in crucial CL matches.

We insisted on using some of the worst tools at our disposal and EV propagated the weaknesses of the roster over 2 separate transfer windows, something he is also responsible for.

[xXKonan]

You could give Valverde a shiny new front line but in the end, it will all be the same.

No matter how many talents or WC players we give him it will be the same result, underperforming and crashing out where it mattered. He cannot build things for his own, he just looks at what his predecessor has left when it comes to the XI and doesn't think what improvements are to be made and thinks "Well if it's good enough for him it certainly is for me!"

Despite the transfers of Vidal/Arda+16/17 transfers not working out, Lucho clearly tried to make some changes in the XI. He replaced Masche with Umtiti, tried to make Roberto into Alves successor, He wanted to replace Rakitic with Gomes in the XI, etc.

It didn't work out but you could tell Lucho seen what was coming and wanted to change things. Valverde came in and didn't even see what was coming, and thought "If Lucho used this XI then it's still good!" I mean sure we won a treble and other stuff with Lucho's XI but if he has seen the problems after two seasons then alarms should be going off.

[khaled_a_d]

We've consistently been awful away in the CL under Valverde. At best we have draws or 1-0 wins, at worst we get obliterated.

We have been awful in away games for over a decade. May be with the exception of 2006 & 2015 we had one of the worst away game downfall for any elite team.
This is something that goes beyond the current coach.

[Aryagorn]

This isn't going to be a popular opinion, but our style will remain as it is until Messi retires. It is all built around him. That is the conundrum that we face. Messi has been such a great servant, it would be downright rude to not but unfortunately he is slowing the progression of the team as a whole. One cannot argue with his stats etc, but we are perhaps a less effective team all round than we would be without him. That is why I think that nobody would be able to do any better than what Ernesto has managed to do and why we have to wait until the 2020/2021 season to see any changes and to judge him then, if he is still there. The core of the current squad over the last few seasons has not been Valvrede's. Ter Stegen, Alba, Pique, Roberto, Biscuits, Rakitic, Messi, Suarez et al were there already, he inherited them and now (sadly) some are in decline. He has no control over the club transfers. None. He can put in a request for the areas that he wants strengthened and the type of player he would like, but that is it. He can't demand a particular player, the club is not set up like that.

As for the CL semi's this year and the quarter's last year, we went into both return legs with a great advantage, one that a professional team of our quality should not have thrown away, certainly not both times! However, I can't see how else Ernesto could have set up the team that he sent out. As I keep saying, the players bottled it, not the coach.

Why is Messi the reason that Rakitic sucks balls? Why is Messi the reason that the stupid manager overlooks the idea that we just need the ball in our mid field when defending a 3-0 lead; and plays Vidal instead of Arthur? Why is Messi the reason that Alba gives away 2 fucking goals in CL semis when we were winning, by making rookie mistakes? Why is Messi the reason that we concede a goal by committing a fucking rookie mistake while defending a corner? Why is Messi the reason that the stupid manager can't see that Coutinho is not a winger? Why is Messi the reason that the stupid manager can't see the fact we only started winning in the first leg after Roberto was removed from RB in the first leg and still plays him in the second leg? Why is Messi the reason that the stupid manager does not give chance to Malcom to shine and plays an injury-prone Dembele before he completely recovered from an injury in an important CL game making him suffer an injury AGAIN? Why is Messi the reason that he does this shit despite the fact that Messi, as a captain comes out and says that he was mighty impressed by the young lad?

[EdmondDantes]

Can't be serious. Before the Anfield game, when people say the line-up and that Arthur did not start, they already knew the plan was to defend, and NOT to break their press, or at least not crap ourselves every time they pressed us. He set up the team to defend and hope for something from Messi. It backfired, like a lot of people expected.

We got lucky in the first game big time, and Valverde thought he could maybe ride his luck again and get away with it. Didn't happen.

What we learned from the Liverpool game is what we already knew before the game.

1) That Liverpool are a force at home and their fans are incredible
2) That if you park the bus, trying to defend, and invite pressure from minute 1, then mistakes happen.

What we did on Anfield, is what PSG did on Camp Nou. Went in trying to preserve the lead, and the pressure got to them. Valverde is like Emery. We have a manager of Arsenal level. Or a bit under (Emery has a stronger resume).

I will be very very very curious to see where Valverde gets after Barcelona. What great teams will fight to land him. My bet is he will go back to his level, which is Bilbao-Valencia.

That midfield trio will forever stay in my memory as pretty much the worst midfield in Barcelona's history, as far as big occasions are concerned. It comfortably outdid that Roma debacle.


And I can't bring myself to blame Busquets for that since he's the only one who can play football out of the 3.

[Barcaman]

You're all obsessed with winning the CL. Basically 7 matches. That's it.

More obsessed with playing nice football mate. You enjoyed how Barca played last 2 years?

[abbbs97]

Friendly reminder that Setien is available yet we still have this idiot fuck as our manager who will have world class attackers and a talented midfield and will still fuck it up.

[serghei]

We have been awful in away games for over a decade. May be with the exception of 2006 & 2015 we had one of the worst away game downfall for any elite team.
This is something that goes beyond the current coach.

Not true. Under Pep we played well away in the CL. Our results didn't match the quality of the football we displayed. Losses vs Arsenal and Chelsea should have been easy wins if not for abysmal finishing. Vs Inter we had one of the worst refereeing performance ever. 2 goals of Inter should have been discarded and a stonewall pen should have been given to us.

There is a big difference between playing well but losing or drawing, and playing terrible while being humiliated.

Under Pep the results did not match the performances away. Under Valverde, the results are a natural consequence of playing shit on a stick defensive football.

[Xaviniesta]

oh god, the valverde cowards who disappeared are slowly coming back with their nonsense

[wisconsincule]

Tough season coming up for Valverde. He could potentially have Arthur, FDJ, Coutinho, Dembele and Semedo all starting on the bench for our first match of the season. All 5 of those players would be automatic starters at pretty much every other club.

Hoping that Coutinho and Rakitic are sold as there really isn’t any space for them in this team.

[serghei]

Tough season coming up for Valverde. He could potentially have Arthur, FDJ, Coutinho, Dembele and Semedo all starting on the bench for our first match of the season. All 5 of those players would be automatic starters at pretty much every other club.

Hoping that Coutinho and Rakitic are sold as there really isn’t any space for them in this team.

Only 'top' manager who becomes more clueless as he has more great options to choose from.

[Poor_Sunyol]

More obsessed with playing nice football mate. You enjoyed how Barca played last 2 years?

I haven't, but I don't believe the blame lies with the manager. The players that were bought in show what style of football he wants to play. They haven't worked unfortunately (Coutinho, Dembele and Malcolm). The older players are starting to show their age, but we are stuck with them for the moment. No other manager would fair any better.