I'm digging how Alexis is slowly crawling back to good form. Despite his terrible misses his overall play has been much improved the past 2 games, showing skills and control/confidence that we haven't seen all season. If he can just stabilize his level a bit and never slip back to fail-Alexis like he did at the end of the Rayo game he deserves a chance to compete for the spot.
However with Cuenca coming back and Deulo coming up, he's REALLY going to have to work for his position. As a coach I would pick Cuenca over Alexis 95% of the time... Cuenca is superior in most all aspects to Alexis if you ask me, and the number one area is CONFIDENCE. Cuenca's been taking on and beating defenders on the world class level since he was like 19-20 or whatever, no fear. He was one of our best wing players last season.
Duelofue, once he starts maturing more, will be one of our best attacking and goal scoring threats on the team. That kid has confidence by the bucketloads and really has his eye on the goal like Messi does. He really has the intent to get to the goal and get around/morally crush anyone in his way. He has the skill to do it too.
Plus we have Tello who shows much skill and directness when it comes to taking shots at goal. That is what we need a LOT more of... that attacking/goalscoring initiative that those 3 have. Yes Alexis has been decent but unless he returns to his goalscoring form of last season he is completely impotent up front and that kills us. If Messi and/or Villa are off game, we won't get goals, and with our less-than-ideal defense we will most likely concede against good opponents.
To me, if he doesn't start scoring again by next season I think he should be out by January. I hope he does well somewhere else but he just doesn't have the Barca quality to me overall. Can be good when he's on point but lacks that certain something that could take him to the next level.
