Hans-Dieter Flick

[malvolio]

Meh, he talks the same things always. Intensity and hopes. Not much to be learned from managers pressers in general. Some combination of moaning, hopes, and things to improve all the time, with a hope that what went poorly will get fixed.

Thing is this wishful thinking about us doing a U-turn in the second part of the season is based on nothing. We were shit in CL vs big teams last season, we are shit this season too.
It's not like this team was some juggernaut that obliterated everything and is now in a drop of form.

I'm not concentrating much on LL as there you can win with donkies like Fermin and Ferran.

 

[Porque]

Aside from the Ferran chance, Barca were still getting dunked on by Chelsea. Couldn't cope with the intensity or physicality of their players. Caicedo, Enzo, Reece, Cucrella were bullying the Barca players with their physiciality.

Chelsea in attack just did was PSG did 3 years ago: Target the likes of Araujo, Kounde and Balde because they know they are poor on the ball.

It's very easy, if you can bully the Barca midfield and put pressure on the Barca defense, the backline will crumble like stale bread.

Until Barca gets some defenders who are good on the ball and can play out of pressure, this is a cakwalk for any team.

Chelsea adjust very well after the first 15-20 minutes where we were finding good outlets from midfield and defence.

I'd put that partly down to Maresca being a very good coach, and us lacking the talent (Araujo-Pique in defence, Eric in midfield).

Lewy for example is getting blasted on here but 11v11 I thought he was doing fine with the ref being very soft to the Chelsea centreback for some reason he their duels.

 

[serghei]

Chelsea didn't target anyone in particular. Played their normal game and put us under pressure, then collected the reward as our weaker players couldn't cope with the pressure and intensity/pace of the game. Hell, not even the better players showed much, so of course the weaker ones had disaster games.

There's not a question of targeting X or Y. They played their normal game and played through their best players, and it was already enough to beat us. They probably beat us in 11 vs 11 too, but in a closer game. They played a better match.

It was us who had to adapt to them and we couldn't do it.

 

[serghei]

Thing is this wishful thinking about us doing a U-turn in the second part of the season is based on nothing. We were shit in CL vs big teams last season, we are shit this season too.
It's not like this team was some juggernaut that obliterated everything and is now in a drop of form.

I'm not concentrating much on LL as there you can win with donkies like Fermin and Ferran.

Shit is overblown by a mile.

Just because we have issues beating A or A+ sides it doesn't mean we're not good. You have to look at context a bit. All these teams people gush about on this forum didn't amount to much in CL either.

If you make a list of teams that checked quarters + semis in CL in the last 2 seasons or bettered this resume, it's a very short list with maybe 3-4 teams apart from us on it.

We have to understand the club's situation and be sympathetic to this. Everyone wants Barcelona to be in the elite squadron of teams, but we're just not there and we will never be until our finances get to at least half the comparable teams we are facing. We have teams investing 1bn+ to build their squad, and we are not even at half that.

Miracles don't happen in football. They just don't at the level fans dream of.