I've believed in sanchez the entire season, thinking "hey, at least he gets to those chances, his movement is fantastic". but today i realized he needs to go, even though he didn't play. Our problem is that we're not as balanced as in 10/11. No, it's not because messi is playing centrally as some people suggest. Our other forwards are wasting chances left, right, and you guessed it, center. But I think part of the problem is that our wingers are utilized as secondary fullbacks, merely providing width, to give messi more space to do his thing and to be passing outlets, helping us maintain more possession. They have 0 responsibility to score. And when given such little responsibility, why would they score. It's in the humans nature to step up when given more responsibility. A good example is parenthood, but it applies in football too. Look at isco after cazorla's departure, and SES after zlatan. We need to go back to a system where the opposition can't just triple up on messi, because we have wingers like eto'o and henry, like villa and pedro of 10/11 that take advantage of that space. . Neymar could be a good start, but we have to give him freedom, while limiting some of messi's. No, not because neymar is remotely close to messi or even fit to wipe his boots. But because when teams triple up on messi, we're toothless.
The thing with sanchez is that if he plays, scuffs 2-3 chances, and messi picks up his slack and scores 2, the players mindsets won't change and they'll coninue to pass to messi all the time. that's why i am now portraiting him as the scapegoat of our flaws as a team because he is the player who epitomizes it best, and he's the player who in my mind is most likely to prevent a change, even though he didn't play today. We can't continue to have cases like against real madrid and chelsea because, while partly down to bad luck (today it wasn't only bad luck chance wise but also with the choice of ref and puyi's slip), it's also due to our system. Pep took it too far, and we need to fix it.