Frenkie de Jong

[khaled_a_d]

De Jong is different because he cost a lot of money and when we got him, we knew he's very good.

I have to start with this part, when we signed him he didn't have those performance. We announced his signing on 23rd of January 2019, not at at the end of the year.
Eredivisie isn't some high level league by any mean to judge a player and say we already knew he is good, in his first years with Ajax he played a total of 77 minutes in European competition (against mediocre teams at best), and during group stage only good team they faced were Bayern and he missed on of two games.

His best games was with Koeman in NT, that has even worse players than Barca btw. I am skeptical on judging player in national teams competition, but can't deny him of those.
All in all, it was a small sample size.
I think this is important to be stated, because 6 months before we signed him, we made an offer of 30M for him. We saw him the same way like we did with Arthur, a good player in lower ranks with some potential. We even had Rabiot as a valid alternative.
PSG entered, and I think ego played a part and we went all in to get the kid.
This price set some expectations with him, along the performances he had later against RM and Juve.

but no way he's not a top player. It's more a matter of building a top side so he can show more. He won't do much if you pair him with slow has beens like Busi and Pjanic.

My problem with that, is when do we start holding players accountable for their performance?
I mean you obviously loves to hold veteran accountable, and I am not trying to take that on you, but with those younger players there is always some sort of excuses (not talking about you in particular)

Sure, team is misfit and all, pieces aren't good fit but at some point world class players need to show their worth, at least from time to time.
Messi showed up when we were bad, same with Iniesta, Xavi too, Puyol, Eto & R10 etc showed up their quality even when team wasn't as good, you could always notice they are a notch better than their teammates.
I don't really see that with FDJ tbh, if the team is bad, the good players need to start elevating it. Especially when you have your NT coach and the assistant coach of your time in Ajax.

At this point, I am honestly slowing down my expectation with him. I am not throwing him under the bus, but I will relegate my expectation for him from being a top player in his position, into being a very good starter for us who will work hard for the team. A sort of our new Raki rather than our new Busquets

 

[ItachiXXX]

Messi is the most destabilizing player gameplay-wise in the squad. Everything in our play is bent to suit him. We'll improve once he leaves.

I'm pretty sure form de amigos said the same thing with Valverde. BARCA will improve with a new manager
De Jong and Setien are the same, had a good game against RM and forum de amigos believe the glitch. He is surrounded by bums but still can't outshine Puig playing with the same bums, but De Jong is World Class. Puig >>>> De Hype

 

[Richard.H]

I am done with FDJ. I’ve learned a good lesson in football to not judge players on how good they are based on their spells in other clubs/NT. Player has to be good for Barca, they could be a star at RM and still be shit for Barca

 

[Katarina1]

forum de amigos are writing Frenkie off while the likes of Bayern and City will be interested in signing him. The experts here must know better I guess

 

[te amo barca]

I'm pretty sure form de amigos said the same thing with Valverde. BARCA will improve with a new manager
De Jong and Setien are the same, had a good game against RM and forum de amigos believe the glitch. He is surrounded by bums but still can't outshine Puig playing with the same bums, but De Jong is World Class. Puig >>>> De Hype

I love Puig, what are you on about?

 

[Raki13]

forum de amigos are writing Frenkie off while the likes of Bayern and City will be interested in signing him. The experts here must know better I guess

That will be the same Bayern that thought Coutinho was a player , that turned out well.

 

[vegitot]

forum de amigos are writing Frenkie off while the likes of Bayern and City will be interested in signing him. The experts here must know better I guess

He has quality but not really good at Barca now.

Two things different.

 

[Birdy]

And as if we didn't have enough problems already, Bayern are trying to take advantage of the situation and steal Frenkie from us:


barcacentre
@barcacentre
?
Dec 9
Bayern Munich, who already loved Frenkie de Jong in 2019, are once again interested in signing the Dutch midfielder. Bar?a are aware that Ali Dursun, De Jong's agent, is in contract with the German side. [md]

 

[FinBarcelonafan]

Imagine losing De Jong and playing Busi-Pjanic midfield.

 

[gatsu]

Losing De Jong will be truly catastrophic. He should a key player in any rebuilding strategy we undertake. I mean his intrinsic talent should be obvious by now. You can put 28 years old iniesta in the current team and you can be sure that he will perform poorly.

 

[Rory]

The thing is we signed Frenkie without a plan other than 'at some point he will be the main man in midfield'. It's a bad reason to sign a player. Bayern want him for the right reasons, him Goretzka and Kimmich in a midfield 3 would be tactical heaven for a manager. I've been more than critical of him but we haven't even slightly bothered reinforcing this area of the pitch so that Frenkie is just another piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Instead we have square-peg in a round hole Pjanic, Busquets who's jigsaw piece (to continue analogy) has disintegrated. We have Pedri and Puig, maybe one of them will work, maybe not, from what I've seen they belong to different jigsaw sets

 

[serghei]

Saying he's a top player for what he showed at Ajax is, to put it mildly, a stretch. Altogether, it's been one good season. Very few games against the elite, say 10. And not all of them good, Bbz was on a pattern. Struggled against different types.

None of this means he's poor or unworthy of a chance, but let's not overrate his Ajax spell. Again.

A player of that caliber (said to be top) has to show much higher level, even in far from ideal circumstances.

OK, so we can argue over the semantics of what "top player" means. Personally, I was convinced by what I saw at Ajax and so far at Barcelona to believe that, while he's not a generational talent, he'd be a very good player in a balanced team.

I know it sounds like I'm making excuses for players. But I want to see in the team a framework and a system that are in place no matter who plays. And for years, we've been nothing but an incoherent sum of individual players, with some managers applying short term measures to keep this team from falling apart at some point or another. Going from worse to worse with each passing season.

My problem with that, is when do we start holding players accountable for their performance?
I mean you obviously loves to hold veteran accountable, and I am not trying to take that on you, but with those younger players there is always some sort of excuses (not talking about you in particular)

Sure, team is misfit and all, pieces aren't good fit but at some point world class players need to show their worth, at least from time to time.
Messi showed up when we were bad, same with Iniesta, Xavi too, Puyol, Eto & R10 etc showed up their quality even when team wasn't as good, you could always notice they are a notch better than their teammates.
I don't really see that with FDJ tbh, if the team is bad, the good players need to start elevating it. Especially when you have your NT coach and the assistant coach of your time in Ajax.

At this point, I am honestly slowing down my expectation with him. I am not throwing him under the bus, but I will relegate my expectation for him from being a top player in his position, into being a very good starter for us who will work hard for the team. A sort of our new Raki rather than our new Busquets

You say sure, team is misfit and all, and continue. I stop there. That is priority zero. Everything goes from this. The team should be fit, motivated, coherently put together (to want to run, to be able to run, and to know how to run). These are all basic things for any serious competitive team. Then we can talk about individual performances. It's about management in the end. If the management is crap, the team will play like crap probably. The cliche that football belongs to the players is total crap. There's a whole world of football that exists outside of the 90 mins you see each week or twice a week on the telly.

For me, top players are the players that play well consistently and are decisive when most of the things in a team are working, so a platform has to be there and that platform doesn't depend on what the players do on the field. Until we have a team that is working collectively, I usually give the benefit of the doubt to players when I rate them. Call it leniency, finding excuses, or whatever. I'm the opposite of BBZ, who starts rating every player from zero coins and undervalues the role of the club. You are closer to BBZ (just giving him as an example because he is extreme about this), in that you also apply a lot of pressure on our players in terms of expectations very fast.

 

[Gnidrologist]

So, Bayern wants shitty overhyped dutchman. Hmm...

 

[Richard.H]

90 mill or more and i would cash out on him. He doesn't fit Barca profile unless we cover him with 2 DM's.

 

[gatsu]

90 mill or more and i would cash out on him. He doesn't fit Barca profile unless we cover him with 2 DM's.

Currently Bar?a doesn't have any clear profile. We don't even know if we will keep following our fundamentals or not. thanks to rat face our finances are in pretty bad shape and the most logical thing to do is to at least keep the younger talents