David Villa

[jtmx12]

We didn't need "defensive security". Betis scored a goal and hit the woodwork 3 times. Where was the defensive security you're talking about? We needed someone with a serious goalscoring aura upfront other than Messi. Which automatically pins the opponent back and brings "defensive security" because every defender respects David Villa but no one respects Alexis or Pedro who TOGETHER have 1 goal in La Liga after 15 games.

And it's a myth that Villa doesn't do his defensive job anyway. He works as hard as Pedro or Alexis. Just because he doesn't flap around with his arms while running doesn't mean he doesn't track back.

+1 to everything, but +10 to the text highlighted.

Well, that + breaking records to La Liga start etc. Among other things.
One can hardly argue with his selection of players. Particularly when you have Iniesta occupying one place on the flank you need a hard working winger on the other to have some balance.

All by himself I guess. Messi winning the game alone today is all thanks to Tito. Or Villa the "old, bad" striker scoring and making us win 3 points against Sevilla "only playing 10 minutes" is also thanks to Tito.

The only reason why Tito is alive is because of the awesome legacy Pep left (and the unexpected bad liga start RM had). He's also the one that managed to get the best "Messi" and his goals is the main reason why we have the record in La Liga.

Among other things: you mean like losing the first opportunity to win a title ("Spanish Supercup") as a first coach with Barcelona against the guy who not long ago had a finger on his eye? or not being able to win against Real Madrid in Camp Nou either?

Tito is destroying Villa's confidence. That's all he does. So what if he had a bad game last week? When a striker doesn't play consistently he won't perform consistently. Rocket science. When Cesc played like crap Tito stuck with him for months until it worked. Playing Alexis who a) came back from a 4 week injury and b) didn't set the world on fire before his injury anyway ahead of Villa is almost insulting. Seeing Alexis flopping in the penalty box again and Pedro not scoring for 936 games now while Villa doesn't get a minute - fucking hell.

Apparently Villa can't have a bad game because he will miss the next one if that happens. However, Cesc can have as many bad games as he wants. At the end, he's protected by that aura called "been a canterano from La Masia".

I'm looking forward to the day he leaves this team.

The "Transfer Window" for Spain, Germany, Italy is in Junuary 1, in 21 days basically. Looking at how "happy" p) Villa is every time he's on the pitch, and how many minutes he's getting, it may happen sooner than I thought.

I've said it a few days ago: Cesc & Pedro will play every single match because they are from La Masia, and Alexis will still be ahead of Villa because he's young, who cares if he keeps playing like crap (not Tito at least). Villa leaving isn't a bad thing.

P.S: Tito, the "specialist" hasn't been able to get Villa at 100% in a whole year (he was injured in dec 15 last year). And most important, in the process, he has destroyed Villa's confidence. Awesome work, which some people seem to admire every single time.

 

[xavi_the_Boss]

All by himself I guess. Messi winning the game alone today is all thanks to Tito. Or Villa the "old, bad" striker scoring and making us win 3 points against Sevilla "only playing 10 minutes" is also thanks to Tito.

The only reason why Tito is alive is because of the awesome legacy Pep left (and the unexpected bad liga start RM had). He's also the one that managed to get the best "Messi" and his goals is the main reason why we have the record in La Liga.

Among other things: you mean like losing the first opportunity to win a title ("Spanish Supercup") as a first coach with Barcelona against the guy who not long ago had a finger n his eye? or not being able to win against Real Madrid in Camp Nou either?

Well i think it was tito who subbed on Villa against sevilla.Tito also decided that messi should start against betis.1st you make it sound as if its only down to the players that we won all this matches but suddenly when we lose to Real Madrid its Titos fault.Even though we lost the supercopa only through individual mistakes by Mascherano,Valdes and Adriano.
Give Tito some credit as he made the best league start ever.
Seriously just because Villa doesn´t play as much as you think he should makes Tito a bad coach for you.

 

[Semi-Neutral]

Among other things: you mean like losing the first opportunity to win a title ("Spanish Supercup") as a first coach with Barcelona against the guy who not long ago had a finger on his eye? or not being able to win against Real Madrid in Camp Nou either?

Because, you know, Tito totally controls Valdes not being able to stop a simple back-pass. Not to mention tying Real Madrid isn't what I'd (or the vast majority of people) would call an embarrassment.

When Cesc played like crap Tito stuck with him for months until it worked.

I'm pretty sure Fabregas has been great this season, and when he played like crap, that was Pep as a manager, not Tito.


Anyway, about today's game. Nobody can deny that Sanchez and Pedro did not have a good game today. Nobody. But I have no idea why Tito should have put in Villa over Sanchez. Alexis was rested because of his injury, and eager to get back into the game; Villa had played against Benfica and sucked. He had several one on one chances which, would he have buried them, would have almost certainly given him an inclusion in today's side. Instead, he was offside every other play and generally looked poor. Villa is an excellent player, and, when on form, clearly deserves to play for Barcelona; after such a poor show, however, it is only right that he stay on the bench.

I do agree that Tito should have put him in for Pedro instead of Thiago; however, Thiago played excellently in the little time he had and created several goal-scoring chances. Also, I am confident we will see Villa in the Copa del Rey on Wednesday, and he will most likely play the full ninety minutes. If he can show Tito that wants to play and has forgotten the midweek horror show against Benefica, he will probably get playing time against Atletico this week.

 

[jtmx12]

I'm pretty sure Fabregas has been great this season, and when he played like crap, that was Pep as a manager, not Tito.

Oh Boy, you need to re-watch the first 10 matches from Fabregas this season then or you could just look at the posts made around that date in Fabregas Thread. Don't lie please.

Instead, he was offside every other play and generally looked poor. Villa is an excellent player, and, when on form, clearly deserves to play for Barcelona; after such a poor show, however, it is only right that he stay on the bench

Villa fails 2 chances in a single game and suddendly he's banned from playing the next one. Alexis has failed million of chances in all his games this season (which explains his single goal) and (Pedro pretty much the same) but they keep playing every single game.

The truth is that Tito uses any excuse to keep Villa in the bench and to avoid benching Pedro, Cesc, or Alexis over him because they are young or most important, players from La Masia. Period.

When Villa had a great game and scored, he was always benched the next game (or in the same one). Now he had a bad game (and let's remember, everyone else had a bad game as well, because it wasn't an important match and there wasn't a reason to play great), and he was benched as well. Tito doesn't care whenever Villa plays good or bad, he's going to bench him anyways. He's going to take any little excuse to do it.

 

[Flavia]

When Villa had a great game and scored, he was always benched the next game (or in the same one). Now he had a bad game (and let's remember, everyone else had a bad game as well, because it wasn't an important match and there wasn't a reason to play great), and he was benched as well. Tito doesn't care whenever Villa plays good or bad, he's going to bench him anyways. He's going to take any little excuse to do it.

It surely is on Tito's agenda to ruin villa's career on Barça, as well as bench him no matter what...
You'd make hba proud. I want to see Villa starting ahead of sanchez too, but Tito's motivation is the team. I dont believe he has any kind of grudge against Villa. It's always best to wait and see what'll happen, we dont actually can read people that well thru tv. Iniesta looked pissed when he scored against Levante, but he surely wasnt.

 

[-SG7-]

You are completely missing my point. When a manager picks a player, he doesn't look at his entire career to select him; otherwise, Giggs and Scholes would start every game. The manager looks at recent form, and in recent form, Sanchez is rested, while Villa played four days ago for the full 90(I think?) and sucked.

Hes got a point there. I think the next few games will most likely decide if he stays at barca after the winter transfer window or not. Villa just has to stay motivated an he can do it..but given his circumstances an whats going on i can see why he seems disheartened/ unmotivated to play.

 

[Flavia]

As for the talk of being insulting to David Villa, if anything is insulting to him it is the typical-barca-forum argument that he should play more, and play centrally so that he won't sulk and be offended, and can't bother to be motivated playing a few minutes on the wings. That is extremely insulting to the character of Villa, to suggest that he can't handle things not being handed to him on a silver-platter.

One could think Villa is a spoilt brat from some posts here.

 

[Semi-Neutral]

Guys, you misunderstand me. When Villa was beasting it up and scoring goals, I fully agree that he should have been played more. Maybe not in the very beginning of the season, but he should have gotten more time than he did, that's for certain. All I'm saying is that I agree with Tito's choice to play Sanchez over him in this particular game.

 

[Kerrybai]

I reckon Tito will now realise that he has to give Villa more playing time. Hopefully he does well against Cordoba to further prove his worth to Tito.

 

[Stric]

Adriano and Mascherano are both 28. Alba is 23, Montoya and Bartra are 21. That's a 5-7 years difference. Villa is 31, and Cesc and Pedro are 25. That's a 6 year difference. Notice the similarity? Your theory is based around the idea that players, I quote, CANNOT BE BENCHED because they're either young or from La Masia, and that better and more experienced players aren't getting playing time because of it. Well, here you have several examples of both young and La Masia players being benched in favor of equally older, non-canterano players. Your theory is bad and you should feel bad. And if you weren't so pleased with yourself and your childish conspiracy theories, maybe you'd think straight for a minute and realize that "not 100% fit" and "played bad in the last match" are sometimes (this time, as well) solid reasons for benching a player, regardless of his name and how he played several games ago.

 

[footyfan]

@ursegor

To be honest, this is quite ridiculous! messi needs help, no-one made the run in the center. Everyone kept backing away like the defenders in that play where there was a sea of defenders. I guess this justifies the neymar purchase for me.

When will we buy Neymar?

Good question. We definitely need to fix our problem of being the highest scoring team in Europe.

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Symptomatic problem? Well, the symptom of a problem would be if we didn't score enough. We have scored 50 goals in 15 league games. We are not lacking goals.

Half of them scored by Messi. The other half probably either assisted or pre-assisted by Messi. The symptom is not the lack of goals. It's the lack of goals bar Messi. Once Messi is effectively guarded in a CL semi-final and no one else makes use of the extra spaces this will happen again:

So it's OK to use the "highest scoring team in Europe" argument when talking about Neymar but not when talking about Villa...Please, have some consistency.

I agree with your second argument about Messi-dependency. Neymar is needed as much as Villa is, if you can understand what I'm saying. If Villa is being pushed out of the club, we might end up needing another superstar who keeps defenders busy.

 

[Stric]

+1 on that observation, Flavia. It's like high-fiving yourself.

 

[Flavia]

Neymar wont come next summer, if that is the supposed reason why Tito would be pushing Villa out.

 

[Stric]

Pedro is the only one who can play on the right, that's why he's playing so much. Sanchez, Tello, Iniesta and Villa are being rotated on the left. You should have noticed that by now.

By the way, you are quite inpolite. I don't see how you expect or deserve thoughtful replies with such behavior. Consider yourself ignored.

 

[Ursegor]

Neymar wont come next summer, if that is the supposed reason why Tito would be pushing Villa out.

It's not that Tito is pushing him out deliberately. Claiming that would be nonsense. It's "just" shitty man management. Football is as much about confidence and psychology as it is about talent. At the beginning of the season Villa was all smiles, backheel passes and cocky celebrations. He scored with every shot on goal. His body language was looking like he was eager to score 30 goals this season and prove a point after his leg break. Since then he's been constantly left out from the first team for whatever reasons until his body language turned into shit recently. I can guarantee you that even Messi would start to perform weirdly if he only played some fringe minutes here and there alongside B players like Rafinha, Song, Tello, Planas in meaningless "already qualified" CL games. It's not a conspiracy against Villa. I'm sure Tito is just trying to integrate Fabregas into the team (who will be here for a much longer time than Villa) and giving Alexis some minutes to regain form as soon as possible after his injury (who will probably stay here for a much longer time as well). But it still remains shitty man management and Villa's body language is evidence for that. Now all of a sudden Villa is in a position where he feels pressure to prove himself (which is completely unnecessary, he was already doing fine) alongside the B team. Once these things get into a player's head he'll start to overdo things, try to impress deliberately, produce awkward misses etc.

The coaching staff of Barcelona is just terrible in dealing with non Masia players. Which is why I'm really curious to see how Pep will do with his next team.