Francesc "Tito" Vilanova

[spark]

Yup, we dominated Chelsea and got unlucky. We must have hit the woodwork more times than Chelsea had shots on target
I definitely think we would have gone through had Villa not been injured (and Villa's injury, unlike the injuries we've had this season, was not the coach's fault). Hell, I think we would have scored at least 5 goals over the 2 legs.

If you take a look at the Bayern game... massive difference. We got completely dominated and conceded 7 goals. And created fuck all. Our tactics were shit. Our players looked unmotivated. We had a pretty heavily injured side due to Tito overplaying certain players (Xavi, Messi, Puyol, etc). Tito did fuck all in the first leg, he just stood there and watched us get hammered. Etc, etc, etc. I'd say Tito's the main reason we lost 7-0 to Bayern.

Comparing Bayern to Chelsea is as asinine as it gets . "Hahah we created a lot of chances against the worse cl winners but didnt against one of the most dominant treble winners". Why in the world would that happen? What does basic logic tell me

 

[darthvader7888]

Comparing Bayern to Chelsea is as asinine as it gets . "Hahah we created a lot of chances against the worse cl winners but didnt against one of the most dominant treble winners". Why in the world would that happen? What does basic logic tell me

You do realize that the same applies to pretty much every big game, right? It wasn't just Bayern, we've been shit in big games in general this season (RM, 1st leg against Milan, etc), and while we weren't perfect last season, we were much better in big games.

 

[spark]

Then you should see Barça against rm, or on the cl this and last season. Even losing the game of 2012 at camp nou to rm, what rm did to barça this year was far, far worse. The way the team played against the big teams this season was laughable. Getafe and espanyol will never be the benchmarks for a team like Barça.

From this point, Madrid was having many chances against us that if not for posts we would have lost heavily. Cristiano started to scare our defenders from that games, as did Ozil start to have an impact against Busquets. It was followed up with the 2-1 at our stadium. People are making selective arguments. What if Pedro Cesc and Xavi had taken all the chances at the Bernabeu and won the game instead of drawing 1-1? We played better had more chances while they didnt have any apart from the set piece goal. By everyone's logic that should be up there with dominating Chelsea and losing 1-0 . We missed our chance to kill the semi final then and paid for it in the second leg. It was the reverse of the year in front.

 

[footyfan]

I would blame Xavi and Iniesta far more than Messi for our defensive issues. I don't understand how these two always escape criticism.

 

[spark]

You do realize that the same applies to pretty much every big game, right? It wasn't just Bayern, we've been shit in big games in general this season (RM, 1st leg against Milan, etc), and while we weren't perfect last season, we were much better in big games.

No, Milan away last year: 0-0, not many chances ,we officially complained to Uefa about the San Siro grass, they then took the lead at Camp Nou in the following game but we got two penalties, one of them very soft. Our away games in the cl every year, whether at Arsenal or in Lyon or Stuttgart were always the same. The two Milan games were also identical except this year Milan had a younger more mobile team. We played well in Paris until Messi got hurt. Anyone that says we would have coped with him being subbed off last year is reaching. Not when the every winger cut back every ball to Messi system started last year.

 

[oz187]

Getafe and espanyol will never be the benchmarks for a team like Barça.

The benchmark for a team like Barca is consistency in the league. In this aspect Barca were superior this year to last year. As for Madrid not doing so well, that was due to a few different factors including other teams figuring them out and also less assistance from the referees. There's a saying "the table doesn't lie", when a team wins by 15 points then it definitely doesn't lie. It was a record winning margin. Trying to downplay that is something I'd expect from a deperate Madridista. It's nonsensical, you guys should be grateful to Tito and the team for managing to do that.

You do realize that the same applies to pretty much every big game, right? It wasn't just Bayern, we've been shit in big games in general this season

Big game no 1: 2-2 draw with Madrid in the League. Were winning 2-1 and were the most likely to win after Madrid had equalised.
Big game no 2: 4-1 thrashing of Atletico Madrid who were second in the league.
Big game no 3: 1-1 draw away to Madrid in the Copa, Cesc and Pedro missed sitters that would have put Barca 2-0 up and in complete control of the tie.
Big game no 4: 0-2 defeat to Milan, tactics were poor and the players also lacked spark.
Big game no 5: 1-3 defeat to Madrid, started well but lost their way throughout the game and were 0-3 down.
Big game no 6: 4-0 smashing of Milan.
Big game no 7: 2-2 draw away to PSG, were 1-0 up and 2-1 up, PSG had two lucky goals, one a blatant offside, the other a last minute deflection.
Big game no 8: 1-1 draw home to PSG, started in a position to qualify, then PSG had the lead for 20 minutes, then Barca scored and remained in a position to qualify till the end. PSG didn't threaten in those last 20 minutes.
Big game no 9: 0-4 thrashing by Bayern. Tactics were poor and the players played badly too. Team was suffering greatly in injuries having to rely on Barta, with Busi and Messi also carrying injuries.

I don't see the "shit in big games". There's a couple of great victories, a couple of horrible defeats, one bad defeat and a bunch of draws.

 

[footyfan]

PSG deserved to go through more than Barca, the same way Barca should've gone through instead of Chelsea

 

[Galning]

PSG deserved to go through more than Barca

Euhm no.

 

[Stric]

PSG deserved to go through more than Barca, the same way Barca should've gone through instead of Chelsea

We did play like crap on pretty much all occasions before and after the second leg against Milan, but that doesn't mean PSG deserved to advance more than Barca.

 

[Flavia]

The benchmark for a team like Barca is consistency in the league. In this aspect Barca were superior this year to last year. As for Madrid not doing so well, that was due to a few different factors including other teams figuring them out and also less assistance from the referees. There's a saying "the table doesn't lie", when a team wins by 15 points then it definitely doesn't lie. It was a record winning margin. Trying to downplay that is something I'd expect from a deperate Madridista. It's nonsensical, you guys should be grateful to Tito and the team for managing to do that.

No, it's not just consistency in the league. CL matters a lot also. Only 5 wins in 12 CL games, with 3 draws, 4 losses and that aggreagate of 7-0 is just unacceptable. The worse lost in I don't know how many decades. You're ignoring the CL just to try to prove Tito is a good coach for Barça. Barça was bad vs Celtic, Milan, rm, Psg and Bayern. And the worse part for me was he didn't try again the formation that beat Milan. It was just that game. Than it all came back to the old formation and tactics.

And on the league, Messi bailed out the team countless times. His streak of 19 games scoring in a row was more decisive than Tito. I highly doubt the team would be even on 2nd spot without Messi, let alone win it.

 

[Johan Cruijff]

I have been saying this all season. Tito is tactically inept. He has failed in almost every big game we played in. We lost to an average Milan side, psg outclassed us, Madrid humiliated us 3 times and Bayern tore us apart. The team is not responding to old ideas. As bella guttmann said, you need to either change the management or the players. We haven't really done either. We are losing the footballing principles that Pep gave us. Once Tito eaves Peps era s over.

 

[spark]

No, it's not just consistency in the league. CL matters a lot also. Only 5 wins in 12 CL games, with 3 draws, 4 losses and that aggreagate of 7-0 is just unacceptable. The worse lost in I don't know how many decades. You're ignoring the CL just to try to prove Tito is a good coach for Barça. Barça was bad vs Celtic, Milan, rm, Psg and Bayern. And the worse part for me was he didn't try again the formation that beat Milan. It was just that game. Than it all came back to the old formation and tactics.

And on the league, Messi bailed out the team countless times. His streak of 19 games scoring in a row was more decisive than Tito. I highly doubt the team would be even on 2nd spot without Messi, let alone win it.

Funnily enough we also only won 5 of 12 in 2009-2010.

 

[footyfan]

We did play like crap on pretty much all occasions before and after the second leg against Milan, but that doesn't mean PSG deserved to advance more than Barca.

On the balance of play, yeah they did. They created more chances than us and hit the woodwork twice in the first game. They were definitely better than us in the second leg and should've scored much before Pastore put them in front. Whereas Barca took all their chances bar the one Sanchez messed up in the first game.

And I didnt said they deserved to go through, I said they deserved to go through same way Barca deserved to go through vs Chelsea. You can't argue for one but argue against the other.

 

[Flavia]

Funnily enough we also only won 5 of 12 in 2009-2010.

But I don't remember losing 7-0. Or 0-3 on Camp Nou. It's also the way those losses happened. Barça showed nothing, and Tito just watched. Claiming the team was tired, plagued with injuries... well, whose fault is that, if not the coach's? Started with bad signings, continued with bad rotationing, and culminated with horrible displays against top opositions.

 

[Eetu]

We've been way too reliant on our home form in Europe for the past five years.

That is also the time Tito has been on the bench.

Everone happy now?