*I can't stress this point enough! The discrepancy between our home and away game's performance. Home advantage is actually a thing, but Barcelona have taken it to another level. We can play great at home and neutral grounds but get outclassed even by arguably lesser teams away. This one is not on Valverde. This mentality has been with us even from the 2008 team. If we could play even at 70% of our abilities on away ties we would have won much more CLs in the last 10 years. Why this happens is really beyond me, but it must be addressed at some point.
+1
I would add 2 things:
1. since always, even in 90s and early 00s, we were always a HOME team in Europe.
On Camp Nou, we can win 4:0 against anyone.
On the other hand, on away matches, we can lose 0:2 or 0:3, ALSO against ANYONE.
For a short period of time, those problems were masked due to our insane quality during Pep.
But now, it is slowly coming back.
I have checked all of our Champions league KO matches results from 2008 till today, home and today.
Results are really interesting:
**************************
HOME:
2009:
Lyon 5:2
Bayern 4:0
Chelsea 0:0
2010:
Stuttgart 4:0
Arsenal 4:1
Inter 1:0
2011:
Arsenal 3:1
Shakhtar 1:0
Real 1:1
2012:
Leverkusen 7:1
Milan 3:1
Chelsea 2:2
2013:
Milan 4:0
Psg 1:1
Bayern 0:3
2014:
City 2:0
Atletico 1:1
2015:
City 1:0
Psg 2:0
Bayern 3:0
2016:
Arsenal 3:1
Atletico 2:1
2017:
Psg 6:1
Juve 0:0
2018:
Chelsea 3:0
Roma 4:1
2019:
Lyon 5:1
Man Utd 3:0
Liverpool 3:0
*************************
AWAY:
2009:
Lyon 1:1
Bayern 1:1
Chelsea 1:1
2010:
Stuttgart 1:1
Arsenal 2:2
Inter 3:1
2011:
Arsenal 2:1
Shakhtar 0:1
Real 0:2
2012:
Bayer 1:3
Milan 0:0
Chelsea 1:0
2013:
Milan 2:0
Psg 2:2
Bayern 4:0
2014:
City 0:2
Atletico 1:0
2015:
City 1:2
Psg 1:3
Bayern 3:2
2016:
Arsenal 0:2
Atletico 2:0
2017:
Psg 4:0
Juve 3:0
2018:
Chelsea 1:1
Roma 3:0
2019:
Lyon 0:0
Man Utd 0:1
Liverpool 4:0
**************************************************
**************************************************
Home TOTAL:
29 matches:
22 wins
6 draws
1 defeat (Bayern 0:3 in 2013')
= goals ratio: 78:19
Away:
29 matches
8 wins
9 draws
12 defeats
= Goals ratio: 44:29 for our opponents
Percentage of wins at home=76%
Percentage of wins away=28%
Percentage of defeats at home=3%
Percentage of defeats away=41%
Goals scored per match at home=2,69
Goals scored per match away=1,00
Goals conceded per match at home=0,66
Goals conceded per match away=1,52
2. the 2nd thing, regarding La Liga and hot and cold matches, this season (and Lucho's 3rd season) are starting to remind me of early 2000's and Gaspart's era.
In those days, we were able to win 7:0 or 5:0 at home (or in one match) against anyone, ONLY to lose 0:3 in the next round to Osasuna or Malaga.
Then, 7 days later, we would trash Atletico 5:0. Only again to play 0:0 against a crappy team 3 days later.
So, we were playing hot and cold all the time.
We had a quality to win against anyone, but we didn't have consistency.
Some guys will now say: that is a coach's job.
Ok.
But, imo, it is way deeper. It often happens when a team is complacent, too old, or when a team has mental issues (not too much confidence), or when we lack leaders who will lead a team in tough 0:0 away matches.
In the last 6 rounds:
1. we played bad against Napoli
2. then we played awesome against Napoli 3 days later. Frenkie-Roberto-Alena played like 3 aliens.
3. a few days later against Bilbao, we were very bad again
4. against Betis, we played like aliens again
5. a few days later, against Osasuna, we played like dead grannies again
6. yesterday against Valencia, we played awesome again
So, the point is not to win 5:0 or 7:0, but to win CONSISTENTLY.
2:0 and 2:1 wins are better than 7:0 and then 1:1.
I just checked some results from 2000/01 season, and here are some examples:
Deportivo:Barca 2:0
Sociedad:Barca 0:6
Barca:Real 2:0
Mallorca:Barca 2:0
Barca:Numancia 1:1
We can win 6:0 against Sociedad and win against Real Madrid, only to lose points to Mallorca and Numancia.
Or these results later from the same season:
Valencia:Barca 0:1
Malaga:Barcelona 0:0
Barcelona:Bilbao 7:0
That was a wow match, and people thought: we will start winning again...
Only to lose to Racing Santander 4:0 a few days later, lol.
Here are 2 videos from that season, 7:0 against Bilbao and 0:4 against Racing Santander.
We were extremely hot and cold. Jekyll and Hyde.
Bilbao 7:0: What is worse, we played awesome and could have scored 12-13 goals on that night:
Only to play like EV's Barca only a few days later, as if we fielded a totally different team:
My bet for a current hot and cold displays are:
1. EV
2. complacent and old core of a team
3. no real leaders in a team (and that was even worse without Messi and Suarez). Griezmann is not our leader in this moment.