I mean, the list of flaws with Valverde is so extensive I can't even fathom how anyone can defend him. The Roma loss itself is up there with the worst management I've ever seen, up there with Mourinho in his meltdown seasons. But even ignoring that, his issues seriously drag the team down. Lucho wasn't the best manager imo and he relied heavily on the brilliance of MSN to build his legacy, but at least he knew what his meal ticket was and played to that strength. I used to think anyone could put out the best XI to set the team up for success and watch them go out and win, but then Valverde showed up and threw that out of the window.
Refusing to bench underperforming players for even a single game is startling. Suarez is terrible 9 games out of 10 but he not only gets to start every game, but play the entire 90 minutes. The same goes for Pique, we have 4 quality CBs but only Pique and Umtiti are able to play? If we started an XI without either one of these guys, who are noticeably both part of the "Old guard" we should be desperate to replace anyways, the team would instantly be better for it. Even if both players were in their prime there's no way we'd need them to beat every low level scrub in La Liga and the CL group stage, and, for some reason, early Copa rounds, so what's with the refusal to figure out if other combinations can work?
Sitting back every time we get a lead as if we're not a team that can routinely crush most opponents by 4-5 goals isn't just tiring, it's painful. Why are we subbing off Dembele after he's scored so we can defend a lead with Vidal, who provides fuck all defensively, anyways? When we score a goal we should be pushing to score a second. And a third. Not trying to cling onto the score for 40, 50, or 60 minutes. Yeah he's only lost a few games due to this appalling football, but we lost a lot more under Lucho and there was never a single point where I'd say we were as bad as we are under Valverde, and we'll be lucky to see even a fraction of the success we saw from Lucho if this anti-football continues.
And then, there's the outright refusal to use young players. The mental gymnastics you'll see when this topic comes up are so impressive they'd get banned from the Olympics. No B team in Copa. No B team in easy Liga games. No B team in dead rubber CL ties either. Gomes and Denis need their minutes, after all. It's almost comical how he went from a manager who frequently promoted youth with Bilbao, to a manager who actively ignores them. I guess when you have Messi and Rakitic in your team and you know your shelf life is only a couple seasons long there's no need, huh? I just wish he wouldn't have run his mouth so much about wanting to promote youth before he started actually working the job. He just comes off as a massive liar.
I mean, even among his apologists, I've never seen anything from them that's actually there to like about Valverde. Just a lot of blind defense and trying to bring down far superior men who once held his position for the sake of making him not look so bad. Us "Always being bad in away games" has never been as bad as it has been. You don't go from making the semis or winning the CL every year, to getting humiliated in the quarters by a team far inferior to you, without having a massive downgrade along the way. Our squad hasn't gotten worse, our manager has.