Alexis Sanchez

[Paganinisrvnge]

The lack of goals for the others strikers is actually simple.
There is a limit on how much goals can be scored in a time inteval of let's say 10 games, It's one of two things, It's either the goals gets distributed near equally between the three forwarders or messi takes the higher proportion with the inevitable result of less goals scored by the other two, But you see messi is by far the most clinical and he's a guaranteed bet, It's not humanly possible for pedro and alexis to score a lot while messi maintains his current rate of goals, Again there is a limit of how much scoring chances can be created in a game.
And by the way, These are professional players, The best in the world, If messi get's injured, They won't go, "Oh shit we forgot how to score goals", So there is no such thing as 'messi dependency', It's some kind of a hoax made up by RM fans, Yet we started to believe in it.

Tell that to those of us who saw Messi triple marked by Chelsea defenders and watched Alexis and Cesc miss chance after chance after chance.

 

[xavi_the_Boss]

Tell that to those of us who saw Messi triple marked by Chelsea defenders and watched Alexis and Cesc miss chance after chance after chance.

I´m pretty sure Messi himself had chances and missed and he also missed the penalty.

 

[Paganinisrvnge]

Could Messi have done better against Chelsea? Yes. Should the entire burden of scoring been on his shoulders? No.

 

[Garrus]

It wasn't on his shoulder, The others should have scored but they failed, And that's just football.
So what is your solution exactly sell all of them except messi because they failed to score.

 

[lessthanjake]

Tell that to those of us who saw Messi triple marked by Chelsea defenders and watched Alexis and Cesc miss chance after chance after chance.

Messi missed chances too. Sometimes the whole team misses chances. It's not entirely logical to take an extremely small sample size of two matches in which non-Messi players were wasteful with chances and say "OMG THE TEAM IS ENTIRELY DEPENDENT ON MESSI FOR GOALS!!!" It's just a couple matches. Teams are sometimes wasteful.

Messi scores a lot of goals, but the team isn't actually THAT Messi dependent. Last season, Barcelona scored 190 goals. Messi scored 73. So there were 117 non-Messi goals in 64 matches, or 1.83 per match. In 2010-2011, Barcelona scored 147 goals in 60 matches. Messi scored 53 goals, so the there were 94 non-Messi goals in 60 matches, or 1.57 per match. This season, Barcelona has scored 77 goals in 27 matches. Messi has scored 34, so there are 43 non-Messi goals in 27 matches, or 1.59 per match.

So basically, the year everyone lists as being the least Messi-dependent actually saw the least goals per match from non-Messi players. Even though the other forwards aren't scoring much, the system has changed. The other forwards are put even wider in the last couple years, which leaves space for the midfielders to score more. It's working.

 

[Richard.H]

Okay let's pretend some more that Pedro and Alexis are valuable contributors in this system of ours. Messi scoring has been a dream, but no team should rely on one player as much as we do Messi. What happens the next time we face a Chelsea like parked bus in CL who focus solely on Messi? I'd much rather have distributed goals among three forwards than have all our goals go through one person. I guarantee you our players will be much happier then (see Ibra pissed, Villa pissed, etc etc). Problem is, Pedro has regressed and he hasn't improved on anything. He's quite bad now. Yikes right? I know it sucks to say I'm the biggest Pedro fan there is but I'm also a realist. Alexis can't do anything but hit the deck every time someone gets physical with him. The other half of the time he is losing the ball. It's like clockwork. Some asset.

Can't believe I'm 100 % agreeing with Pepe. Seriously, there's no way we can rely on Messi solely because even a GOAT of a player can't go through 3 players who try to mark him. We desperately need our wingers to step up and play well. Too bad Tito doesn't give a crap about Villa and only focuses on the young wingers.



Also, what is it with this crap that people here are praising? Work rate has always been common with barca wingers. Even Eto'o and Henry used to work hard for us and pressure defenders. This is a prerequisite for any player that plays for Barca. It's something that is always expected from Barca players.

 

[Paganinisrvnge]

Messi did miss chances but he would have been much more effective if the other forwards would have been able to score and force Chelsea to pay attention to them.

 

[footyfan]

Messi missed chances too. Sometimes the whole team misses chances. It's not entirely logical to take an extremely small sample size of two matches in which non-Messi players were wasteful with chances and say "OMG THE TEAM IS ENTIRELY DEPENDENT ON MESSI FOR GOALS!!!" It's just a couple matches. Teams are sometimes wasteful.

Messi scores a lot of goals, but the team isn't actually THAT Messi dependent. Last season, Barcelona scored 190 goals. Messi scored 73. So there were 117 non-Messi goals in 64 matches, or 1.83 per match. In 2010-2011, Barcelona scored 147 goals in 60 matches. Messi scored 53 goals, so the there were 94 non-Messi goals in 60 matches, or 1.57 per match. This season, Barcelona has scored 77 goals in 27 matches. Messi has scored 34, so there are 43 non-Messi goals in 27 matches, or 1.59 per match.

So basically, the year everyone lists as being the least Messi-dependent actually saw the least goals per match from non-Messi players. Even though the other forwards aren't scoring much, the system has changed. The other forwards are put even wider in the last couple years, which leaves space for the midfielders to score more. It's working.

That's what I used to think. But teams are much better now at parking the bus than in 2010-11. Also, some of those stats don't show the whole picture. Goals by non-Messi players are very high in big home wins. While in tough away games, the onus was on Messi to either score or directly assist (talking about last season).

This season I suppose we're a bit better off, mainly because our full-backs are contributing well.

 

[lessthanjake]

That's what I used to think. But teams are much better now at parking the bus than in 2010-11. Also, some of those stats don't show the whole picture. Goals by non-Messi players are very high in big home wins. While in tough away games, the onus was on Messi to either score or directly assist (talking about last season).

This season I suppose we're a bit better off, mainly because our full-backs are contributing well.

But I don't think the problem there is Messi dependency in the sense of there being no other players who could score goals. That was just the team playing badly in away matches. When a team plays badly, their best player naturally tends to be the main one able to find the net despite that. Hence, Barca plays badly and Messi still scores. It was clear last season that when the team played well, the other players could score plenty of goals. The problem wasn't that other players couldn't score, but that the whole team played badly too often, especially in away matches, leaving the team just hoping Messi could score a wonder-goal to make up for it. That's not Messi dependency. That's just having a player that is so good that you might still win matches when everyone else sucks. Most teams would love to have this problem; for most teams, when everyone on the team sucks, they just lose, instead of still having some hope because of one player.

What you are complaining about was a lack of away form. Messi dependency didn't make the team concede 18 goals in 19 away matches, including 5 matches giving up 2 or more goals. You don't often win matches you give up 2 or more goals in. Were we left hoping Messi would bail Barca out when they gave up multiple goals? Yeah, of course. But hoping Messi will produce magic isn't the problem. The problem is that they gave up 2 goals and you just don't usually win when you do that.

My point is this: Barcelona is NOT dependent on Messi having a great game in order for the team to play well. The team can and does have fantastic matches even if Messi is a bit off (see: last match). They are only dependent on Messi to bail them out in matches where they suck. The problem when they suck is that they suck, not that Messi still gives them a hope of winning despite that.

 

[footyfan]

Well then, we're just arguing about semantics, so then there's really nothing to argue about. Last season, Messi-dependency was not just dependency on goals, but dependency on him as in "If he's not gonna do something, no one will". Clearly that has a lot to do with him being so good consistently - so indirectly, yes, we are talking about poor away form. And solutions for that could include wingers scoring more and taking responsibility - which is what was being discussed initially.

So basically we were agreeing on the same things but just highlighting it differently.

 

[Paganinisrvnge]

The thing that we should all agree on is that other people will need to step up and score when Messi gets triple and quadruple marked. Messi will probably still score but it will be much harder being marked by defenders like Hummels, Subotic, Chiellini, Thiago Silva, etc.

 

[lessthanjake]

Well then, we're just arguing about semantics, so then there's really nothing to argue about. Last season, Messi-dependency was not just dependency on goals, but dependency on him as in "If he's not gonna do something, no one will". Clearly that has a lot to do with him being so good consistently - so indirectly, yes, we are talking about poor away form. And solutions for that could include wingers scoring more and taking responsibility - which is what was being discussed initially.

So basically we were agreeing on the same things but just highlighting it differently.

Yeah, it is something of a semantic thing.

I do think, though, that dependency implies that Barca needs Messi to be playing well in order for the team to play well. We don't see that type of dependency. Barca can play great with Messi not at his best.

You seem to define dependency as Barca needing Messi to be playing well in order to win when the team is playing badly. To me, the problem when that happens is the fact that the team was so often playing badly. I guess you would say they were playing badly because they were depending on Messi to make something happen and he sometimes wasn't able to do it. I would dispute that by pointing out again that they often showed they were capable of playing well when Messi was off. They didn't always depend on Messi to make something happen; they depended on it when their form was off. In other words: Bad team form --> Messi dependency, not Messi dependency --> bad team form.

 

[footyfan]

Yeah, it is something of a semantic thing.

I do think, though, that dependency implies that Barca needs Messi to be playing well in order for the team to play well. We don't see that type of dependency. Barca can play great with Messi not at his best.

You seem to define dependency as Barca needing Messi to be playing well in order to win when the team is playing badly. To me, the problem when that happens is the fact that the team was so often playing badly. I guess you would say they were playing badly because they were depending on Messi to make something happen and he sometimes wasn't able to do it. I would dispute that by pointing out again that they often showed they were capable of playing well when Messi was off. They didn't always depend on Messi to make something happen; they depended on it when their form was off. In other words: Bad team form --> Messi dependency, not Messi dependency --> bad team form.

hmm...this is what I feel:

(1) We had games where the team played bad, Messi played well and "rescued" us with either a win or draw- like Levante away, Valencia away, Bilbao away, Atletico away. Or for a recent example, Osasuna away this season or Betis away to some extent.
(2) The second case (which you're forgetting) - where the team played well, but Messi was off, yet we still dropped points. Espanyol away, Villarreal away, Chelsea away, Sevilla home.
(3) The one you're referring to - team played well, Messi was off, we won - Quite a few games.

Within the first two cases, that's quite a few dropped points. So by your definition, it clearly is not Messi-dependency because Barca can play well without Messi being good. Yet whenever we drop points, Messi either was off, or had done enough to get a draw - like two amazing passes vs Valencia away or last minute scrappy goal vs Bilbao.

 

[raskolnikov]

Where do you think we would have ended up if Zmessi had not been godlike carrying the team last year? It would have been a real struggle to reach cl, most of the team outside of Leo,Busi and Mascherano didnt live up to their potential.

 

[lessthanjake]

hmm...this is what I feel:

(1) We had games where the team played bad, Messi played well and "rescued" us with either a win or draw- like Levante away, Valencia away, Bilbao away, Atletico away. Or for a recent example, Osasuna away this season or Betis away to some extent.
(2) The second case (which you're forgetting) - where the team played well, but Messi was off, yet we still dropped points. Espanyol away, Villarreal away, Chelsea away, Sevilla home.
(3) The one you're referring to - team played well, Messi was off, we won - Quite a few games.

Within the first two cases, that's quite a few dropped points. So by your definition, it clearly is not Messi-dependency because Barca can play well without Messi being good. Yet whenever we drop points, Messi either was off, or had done enough to get a draw - like two amazing passes vs Valencia away or last minute scrappy goal vs Bilbao.

I think only the 2nd case there is an example of "Messi dependency" being a big concern.

You expect your best player to rescue you sometimes; it shouldn't be concerning that that happens. EVERY team will need rescuing sometimes, and their best player is most likely to be the one to do it. It is only concerning if you can't win when the team is on form but your best player is off. That indicates that your results will solely depend on whether your best player is on or not, which is the definition of dependence.

You mention a few matches where the team played well but Messi was off and the team dropped points. I'm not sure I agree that the team played well in all those matches, but I won't dispute them. You gave 4 matches. Three of those matches were league matches that ended in draws, not even losses. 6 points is hardly a huge amount of points to lose due to dependency on your best player. In one of those matches, Messi wasn't JUST off form; he missed a penalty to win the match. The team gave up zero goals and forced a penalty (Messi didn't force it; Iniesta did). That should have been enough to win the match. To me, that match was not the team not being able to get it done without Messi playing well; it was the team being just good enough to scrape by but Messi actively screwing it up. It's a bit different in my mind. It's sorta absurd to rabidly expect a win when your best player not only plays off the whole match but ALSO misses a penalty. I'll give you the Chelsea match (although, again, Messi sorta actively threw away that tie by missing the penalty; you could argue the team actually did enough to get through the tie and Messi screwed it up).

That's sorta besides the point though. You yourself acknowledge that there were "quite a few games" that Barca won where the team played well and Messi was off. You list 3 draws and 1 loss that occurred when Messi was off and the team played well. How dependent are they on Messi if they typically win if they play well and he's off (with an occasional draw and just one loss)? Seems to me that usually being able to win even if your best player is off as long as the rest of the team isn't proves a lack of dependency. If a team can typically overcome the fact that their talisman is off, I see that as a good thing. Of course, sometimes a team can play well and not win because their main goalscorer is quite wasteful in front of goal. That happens all the time in football. But if that sort of thing doesn't normally sink the team, then they are not dependent.