He loses far too many balls without much end product these days. At least he started to work harder off the ball since AM match.
He's still a very good player, but not quite as good as last season imo. Last season he was unplayable at times, and let's not forget goals, he scored a fair amount of superb goals. This season his shooting took a dive. Barely scored a decent goal. Shots that caught the top corner are skewing wide by meters. Nothing close to goals like vs Inter, Madrid 3 times, Espanyol and others.
From potentially the best in the world, this season we look incredibly dependent on Raphinha's end product, leadership, and off the ball work. And Pedri to some extent. Lamine is half as effective imo.
He was poor vs 3 best fullbacks he faced this season, Mendes, Cucurella and Carreras. His dribbling is a bit overrated vs elite opponents. He's nowhere near Messi level to take on 2-3 opponents routinelly. Come on... it is evident.
Solution to solve it simple. If he is drawing tigher marking that makes solo runs more difficult, release the ball faster since other players benefit from more spaces. He ain't doing that enough, he loves to do his tricks with the ball no matter how crowded it is. It looks good, but in bigger games it is counterproductive. Even if he is triple marked he will try to engage into complicated dribbling sequences and this generates too many issues for us.
We should play him less than what we are doing. This season he is drawing more passes and produces less magic. Takes way too many shots for a goal also.
His style can work vs mid to lower table Spanish sides in the form he is atm, but vs bigger sides, it's been rather tame, all bark and little bite.
