Ernesto Valverde: An Analysis of his tenure

khaled_a_d

Senior Member
Sure, a club like Barcelona expects results and I doubt anyone disagrees with this. But we expect results and a good possession football even if we need to sacrifice a trophy less season or two to build something beautiful we are proud off. EV was in survival mode using the same squad over and over while losing sight of the big picture, building a sustained beautiful proudful solution. Where were the youth?

Only youth that proved he was worth a chance that EV didn't give was Puig, and he needed quarantine and empty stadiums to shine, but kudos to him.
Also, what you are saying is short term sacrifice for long term success, for a rebuilding process. Not something that is done all the time.
But this isn't on EV at all. He wasn't brought to rebuild but to win and he was doing his job as he was instructed.
The board never thought about rebuild until now, so why it is the blame of the coach who was hired to win.
EV himself has well documented history using young players, but he isn't gonna do it if it isn't the objective.
 

JohnN

Senior Member
I will attempt to be as bias free as possible.

Ok, Lets go!

The only blight is a 4-4 aggregate loss to Roma.

Underplaying a historic 3-0 hammering from a clearly inferior side as an aggregate 4-4 loss is clearly not unbiased.

Second season, won the league comfortably, was even with Liverpool on xg over the two legs and had bad luck to lose by 4 goals at Anfield. Imo had Dembele put away the sitter unfair or not we break Liverpool and win the treble with a 4-0 win and destroy a spurs we beat easily in the group stage.

Even with Liverpool on xg?
We got demolished in both matches and luck and Messi saved our asses on the first. Any unbiased viewer would say the same. We were lucky not to lose at Nou Camp, by a big margin, in the first place.

Also, Dembele had one miss, a bad one at that, but still one miss. You simply cannot blame a 4-0 battering on that, in order to defend EV.
Again, not unbiased.

3rd season the apparent disaster season. Ok so he's had no Suarez, and no Messi for most of it, disaster right? Well is it? Let's review at the time of his sacking our results. Unbeaten in UCL, top of the league by 2 points and unbeaten in the Copa. Lost the supercup to athletico in one of the best games in the season we played well and deserved to win it. All this without Messi and Suarez for most of it and key injuries to Roberto Alba etc.

We were getting dominated in every single match by teams with 1/10th of our budget and real was crapper than ever.
The last game vs AM we played great and deserved the win (fuck Var for disallowing a great Messi goal).
The sacking after this performance, at that point of the season, was truly mind boggling and simply wrong.

Players loved him, nuff said never defended Setien at all while accepting the blame for the losses.

Players love him because they did whatever they wanted and he did everything in his power to please the seniors, a.k.a bent over.
How can being a pussy be attributed as a good thing?

People forget the deadweight we had with LE, Aleix Vidal, Turan, Gomes etc was a disaster, we shipped out all the deadweight while EV made players like Paulinho work.

Didn't play Semedo, Arthur, Mina, Alena, etc wildly critiqued for this proven right in the end. Quickly preferred Araujo over Tobido with good reason too.

Wanted Willian which people hated, now they cry out for actual wingers, with Willian we would get one of the hardest working players who can play either side. Would offer pace to a side that needs it as well as pressing.

He was able to make players like Paulinho, Vidal, etc.. work. TRUE DAT!

Undefeated against Real Madrid has the best Clasico win percentage along with Pep.

Has the best champions league win % out of any modern manager in history only losing 2 games in 3 years.

Those 2 games are not just "2 games" though, are they? Underselling them, again, is not unbiased.

Myths

Only beat a weak real Madrid side... right so a prime madrid with CR7, Modric, kroos, casemiro is weak fyi they won UCL that season and we won the league both times with points to spare.

Choking began under EV... our away games against European opposition has a sad 20% win rate stat kindly shared by BBZ. The last time we were decent away was under Rijkard this problem goes beyond EV.

Played awful football. Board squandered the Neymar money, EV learned fast in the supercup demolitions that this squad can't play beautiful football, regardless showed glimpses of what he can do with a proper squad look at the Copa final in Iniesta's final game as an example.

1. That was not a prime Madrid by any stretch of the imagination, but we did beat them consistently with a mediocre squad, which is one of EV's good sides.

2. Choking, did begin under EV, in the sense that we had great leads (perhaps undeserved too) that we gave away by playing stupidly and without passion.
We have had many bad away results for a long time, but Roma and Anfield were on a whole new level.

3. EV cannot create a team that plays beautiful football. He is a defensive guy, and that kind of fit to our squad, since they are too unable to play good football.

What has sacking EV gotten us? A trophy less season if you're going to sack him do it at the end of S2 not midway through it is disrespectful to him. And speaking of disrespect the man who bought is trophies is called Retardo but a joke who watched Bayern put 8 past us and not even move gets the respect to be called Setien? Disgraceful...

At least now people can see the squad has been finished and EV was overachieving with what he bad.

The squad needed an overhaul for years. EV was a decent caretaker.

PPS in the Bayern game everyone was awful, in EVs lost games individual errors and poor finishing cost us the wins not bad preparation or formations. Look at Umtiti, Dembele, Rakutic as the main culprits.

Semedo, Mats and Sergi. There you go. Amazingly bad performances from them and too many individual errors.

Please at least show some respect and change the thread title to what he deserves as a valued part of our history.

You can start a Poll for this one. Let's see how it goes. It would be fair.

This is not a biased free post, so it's logical you can expect non bias free responses.

All in all it boils down to this: EV was bad. Setien was bad (worse). One does not exclude the other.
 

Vilarrubi

New member
Ok, Lets go!



Underplaying a historic 3-0 hammering from a clearly inferior side as an aggregate 4-4 loss is clearly not unbiased.



Even with Liverpool on xg?
We got demolished in both matches and luck and Messi saved our asses on the first. Any unbiased viewer would say the same. We were lucky not to lose at Nou Camp, by a big margin, in the first place.

Also, Dembele had one miss, a bad one at that, but still one miss. You simply cannot blame a 4-0 battering on that, in order to defend EV.
Again, not unbiased.



We were getting dominated in every single match by teams with 1/10th of our budget and real was crapper than ever.
The last game vs AM we played great and deserved the win (fuck Var for disallowing a great Messi goal).
The sacking after this performance, at that point of the season, was truly mind boggling and simply wrong.



Players love him because they did whatever they wanted and he did everything in his power to please the seniors, a.k.a bent over.
How can being a pussy be attributed as a good thing?



He was able to make players like Paulinho, Vidal, etc.. work. TRUE DAT!



Those 2 games are not just "2 games" though, are they? Underselling them, again, is not unbiased.



1. That was not a prime Madrid by any stretch of the imagination, but we did beat them consistently with a mediocre squad, which is one of EV's good sides.

2. Choking, did begin under EV, in the sense that we had great leads (perhaps undeserved too) that we gave away by playing stupidly and without passion.
We have had many bad away results for a long time, but Roma and Anfield were on a whole new level.

3. EV cannot create a team that plays beautiful football. He is a defensive guy, and that kind of fit to our squad, since they are too unable to play good football.



The squad needed an overhaul for years. EV was a decent caretaker.



Semedo, Mats and Sergi. There you go. Amazingly bad performances from them and too many individual errors.



You can start a Poll for this one. Let's see how it goes. It would be fair.

This is not a biased free post, so it's logical you can expect non bias free responses.

All in all it boils down to this: EV was bad. Setien was bad (worse). One does not exclude the other.

Touche.
 

Messigician

Senior Member
More or less fair points but I do not agree I am biased. End of the day it is just two games, it's a knockout tie and shit happens. Bit more luck we Go through with just 1 away goal each timem is it really EVs we couldn't even score once?
 

JohnN

Senior Member
More or less fair points but I do not agree I am biased. End of the day it is just two games, it's a knockout tie and shit happens. Bit more luck we Go through with just 1 away goal each timem is it really EVs we couldn't even score once?

Not totally his fault of course.

About the two games:

1. We have established by now it's not just two games, for a Barca fan. Also, it's many bad things he contributed or made happen or didn't stop with his attitude.

2. The players have much of the blame for playing too casually, too afraid and naively.

But his job was too get the squad right (considering the first game too), get them back on their feet when they were getting desperate, make a mid-game call to change the momentum, etc.. He failed badly and was critical in the team's failure.

I believe you are biased and it's ok.

I am biased against EV to a certain point. I am also biased in favour of Messi and have a hard time getting other people's points about him and so on and so forth.
Everybody is biased on way or another, it's impossible to be absolutely objective.
 

Messigician

Senior Member
Good to see Barto name him as one of our all time great Barca managers.

100% regrets sacking him bet it keeps him up at night
 

BADGERBHOY

Senior Member
Good to see Barto name him as one of our all time great Barca managers.

100% regrets sacking him bet it keeps him up at night

Presumably, there will be a queue of clubs looking for his services then, seeing as he's such a legendary manager.
That guy is directly responsible for the state the club is in right now. Letting the seniors do what they like and not phasing them out has proven to be a disastrous policy.
If it had been up to me I would have got rid of him after the Roma debacle.
I expect Koeman to have the balls to do what had to be done way back then.
 

El Guaje

Member
Good to see Barto name him as one of our all time great Barca managers.

100% regrets sacking him bet it keeps him up at night

I expect lots of the biggest clubs to be up his ass and begging him to come then. I mean he is one of the best managers in the history of Barca! He bottled 2 times in a row in the cl, such an overachieving guy!
 

Richard.H

Senior Member
Manchester City is searching for a new manager after their disappointing exit in the Champions League Quarterfinals. Ernesto Valverde is their top candidate. Talks are ongoing with the former FC Barcelona manager. [Source: Messigician]
 

serghei

Senior Member
Manchester City is searching for a new manager after their disappointing exit in the Champions League Quarterfinals. Ernesto Valverde is their top candidate. Talks are ongoing with the former FC Barcelona manager. [Source: Messigician]

Wow, imagine if that would be true. We wouldn't be able to stay on this forum with the Valverde fans.
 

Birdy

Senior Member
I get that line of argumentation.
I can commit to a certain extent: namely that EV is not mainly responsible for the current state of affairs we are experiencing (of course same goes - and even more emphatically - for Setien), but problems run much deeper than his tenure.
Most people here i reckon would accept that, hence in the recent responsibility poll Barto won by a large margin, and seniors came 2nd in the poll with a significant portion of votes. Ernie only got a fraction of votes.

But, there are some distortions of reality in Messigician (and BBZ also) argumentation.
For example, it might be true that Ernie could squeeze the best out of the Amigos late years. But that for example does not disprove the fact that the team was getting progressively worse every term (not only in terms of 'beautiful football', but also in terms of effectiveness of what Ernie was doing all along).

Make no mistake: Ernie would have lost the league to RM, he would have succumbed to Bayern in the same way (Setien's UCL tactics were out of the handbook of Ernie anyway)
 

MTL_Barca

Well-known member
Ernesto Valverde is truly fascinating. You look at the guy and he seems to be exactly as boring und uninspiring as the football his team played on the pitch but somehow that crazy mofo managed to get himself a cult following writing him love letters like this topic.
 

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