Valdez has not pulled off an extraordinary amount of saves. Yes in the Classico he made some world class saves, but you expect a few of them from a world class keeper. The fact is that Tata has had an excellent, near perfect, start to the season, and many of the problems we had last year don't seem to exist any more. We are pressing high up the team again, hence our defensive record has improved, and we create more chances now that we have more players moving into advanced positions.
I can understand why people may have looked at the Celta Vigo game last night and thought that it was a different barcelona. But the simple fact is that we were still playing possession football. The reason it looked so direct is actually down to celta more than it is to barca's tactics. They left huge gaps in between their midfield and defense, and with Tata encouraging players to move into advanced positions when there is space, it meant that practically every time barcelona had the ball, there was a good option to pass the ball forwards.
I would like to reiterate something Pep said before a Champions League game. Barcelona do not play possession football to look fancy, or because it looks good. We play possession football because we believe it is the most effective football for us to play and for us to win.
With that in mind, it would be counter productive to decide that we should purposely waste time passing the ball around the defense and midfield, when our attacking players have moved into advanced positions and are in plenty of space. It is not like we were lumping 40 yard long balls in the general direction of our attacking players whilst they jostled with the centre backs to win the aerial ball. We were playing passes into attackers who were in space to advance and create goal scoring chances. The reason it didn't look as refined, and our ball retention wasn't as crisp as usual, was because we were playing with Song and Cesc in midfield as apposed to Xavi and Iniesta...
Tata himself came from a team that played pressing possession football, he won the argentine league as a manager by playing pressing possession football, I don't think he is going to come the mecca of possession football and then decide to go back on everything and turn us into a direct football team. Some of the people seem to have no faith in him as a manager, yet he has had a better start than any barca manager, and has already shown he is more competent than Tito in terms of tactics.
