Ernesto Valverde - V1

[serghei]

With the turmoil the club is in Valverde could be a disaster. He's never faced the incessant pressure at a big club.

I will be very interested in tomorrow's match.

If he does his job on the field, with tactics, rotations, keeping the players fresh and motivated, he'll be fine. That's what matters for a manager first and foremost, everything else is secondary. He should stay away from these rumors and look strictly at improving the football we play. So, far, he's done that.

I'm quite happy with how we looked in preseason. This game is very important though. First official match and an el clasico. Much more than your usual Supercup tie.

lol

I suppose you're one of the guys who are worried about us catching top 4 in La Liga this season?

 

[NoExpectations]

I suppose you're one of the guys who are worried about us catching top 4 in La Liga this season?

Wrong, not surprising considering though.

 

[vlad]

At the end, its all about valverde, with right system current barca squad can win everything, dembele and coutinho would help more, but without system and ideas how to play, even veratti would not help much, let alone dembele

 

[Neeraj]

A bit disappointing that Valverde doesn't chime in and stop the Paulinho transfer. A player leaving is often out of the hands of the manager; an incoming player however, has to sit favourably with the manager, else it is a pointless signing. Unless its a big marquee signing, the manager is obviously consulted before a signing is made. I don't care how new Valverde is, I expect our manager to have the gumption to stand up and say no to ridiculous transfers like this.

All this is assuming he has said nothing of course. If he said no, and the board still went ahead and bought him for their vested interests, that's another issue.

 

[serghei]

At the end, its all about valverde, with right system current barca squad can win everything, dembele and coutinho would help more, but without system and ideas how to play, even veratti would not help much, let alone dembele

That's right. Sure, the board can help Valverde by signing quality young players, with good technique and with hunger to win (like Dembele and/or Coutinho), or they can make his job harder with shitty deals like Paulinho. But Valverde will still find the right material in the squad to win everything with the team. No question about it.

 

[Raketa10]

As things stand right now we won't complete our team until August 31st. We have to many wrong midfielders and now Paulinho, we don't know if Marlon will be loaned or not and if a new CB will be needed, we don't know what will happen with Samper, Rafinha, Arda, Munir, Vermaelen. We still haven't signed Dembele or Coutinho and we don't know if we will. It's a shitty situation for a new manager.

 

[Sorin]

Hopefully he sees who the dead bodies are and changes something. Otherwise we look dreadful. Not a good start.

 

[Nothanks]

he did absolutely nothing different from lucho

yeah keep passing it to the left wing deulofeu will surely guide us to victory.

 

[Gaudi]

Btw, this is now 3 times in just two games that rm countered us not from mid line but from their goal line. I hope he saw that.

 

[BBZ8800]

Ok, I hope that we will buy both Coutinho and Dembele to slightly raise our chances.

Our team is dead and dying for years.
Especially midfield.
I just can't watch that shit out of Busi-Rakitic-Iniesta.

This is just a first match, but a few things about Valverde's tactic:
1. horrible pick of 3 starters in midfield
2. Iniesta and Rakitic stand closer to eachother than in Lucho's days. But then on the other hand, none of them can't do shit, and we have even less width on wings
3. Messi doesn't play as a RW anymore, which means even more men in midfield getting crowded and nothing happens
4. we buy Semedo and play Vidal. Why?
5. Suarez played insane number of horrible first touch passes. I have a feeling that Valverde instructed him to play faster, first touch passes. But Suarez sucks in them, plus we have no one on wings since Messi is in the middle, so he has no one to pass the ball.

I think that people will realize soon that Lucho wasn't guilty for everything.
Our team just sucks.
Majority of our players will be equally as bad as they were under Lucho (Busi, Rakitic, Iniesta, Suarez).

A good thing is that we lost, maybe we will be even more desperate now and finalize the deals for Coutinho and Dembele.

 

[serghei]

Team wasn't sharp physically, to begin with. Madrid looked fresher. This approach to let Madrid untroubled on the ball and looking to just close the channels is no go. Hope he sees that fast. What we need to be doing is apply pressure on key areas in the game. We let Madrid players on the ball in key areas completely untroubled.

I hope it was a fitness issue. Team looked not even as sharp as in preseason.

 

[Devils]

Amateur hour.

Wake up, you're not managing Bilbao anymore.

 

[DonAK]

He can start making better decisions, but even he cannot turn coal into gold.

 

[evilhita666]

We are fucked, and not his fault either... We simply don't have a competitive squad, it's Messi and 10 mediocre players every single time...

The exact same problems as with Lucho, that should tell the board something, but yeah, let's sign more forwards!

 

[serghei]

He can start making better decisions, but even he cannot turn coal into gold.

The tactical approach was a bit too reactive for me. The way to stop this Madrid team is not to defend against it. 55-45 possession is not enough. We need more control. There were very few attempts to win the ball back through pressing.

He should understand one thing. Barcelona is not a very versatile team, nor they can be. They can be one thing. A team that dominates through possession and tries to attack all the time. There were almost two teams out there who tried to play the same type of game. Madrid is better in this case.