Hans-Dieter Flick

[ajnotkeith]

That means he is gonna waste a lot of points vs smaller teams. Much like Xavi did last season. Not good enough.

How many points would you expect?

 

[serghei]

How many points would you expect?

For a very good league season that would make us challenge Madrid? In the 90-95 range.

85 is a decent league season. Could get us top 3 and CL football next season. Lower than 80 is on the terrible side, unlikely to even finish 2nd with that output.

 

[JamDav1982]

Squad wise this will be the strongest Real and Atletico that Barca have faced in last 3 seasons.
Still should def be finishing ahead of Atletico though.
Top 3 will not be in doubt at all and top 2 should not be either.
If it is Flick won't last long.

 

[serghei]

I mean feck, Xavi made 85 last season and the team had many fuck-ups vs teams we should have beaten easily. Wasted 8-10 points in an absurd manner.

 

[serghei]

Squad wise this will be the strongest Real and Atletico that Barca have faced in last 3 seasons.
Still should def be finishing ahead of Atletico though.
Top 3 will not be in doubt at all and top 2 should not be either.
If it is Flick won't last long.

On the plus side, we made an important signing in Olmo, players back from injury, no Pena in goal to fuck it up, weaker Girona that lost its best players... We lost 6 points to Girona last year that should come back to us this season without many problems.

 

[JamDav1982]

I mean feck, Xavi made 85 last season and the team had many fuck-ups vs teams we should have beaten easily. Wasted 8-10 points in an absurd manner.

They were also fortunate in a good few games.

The 1-0 win away to Sociedad for example.

 

[JamDav1982]

On the plus side, we made an important signing in Olmo, players back from injury, weaker Girona that lost its best players... We lost 6 points to Girona that should come back to us this season without many problems.

Girona are an irrelevance really as even if they kept all from last season Barca should be well clear. Particularly if they have Europe.

The games v them were shambolic and type of games that led to Xavi being dunted would think.

Type of games that led to them saying to him his brother is not cutting it.

 

[jamrock]

Madrid can't do anything about the other 36 games you play against other opponents. You drop very few amount of points vs likes of Bilbao, Betis, Sociedad etc, not to metion likes of Granada, Cadiz or who's in the league at the moment in the relegation zone... things open up for a title challenge. Leagues are about wasting as few points as possible vs good, but not great teams, and medium to low level sides.

Take City last season. Lost 0-1 vs Arsenal and drew 0-0 at home. Still won the league because they wasted fewer points vs rest of the field.

If you look at their h2h vs Liverpool and Arsenal, they won zero games, lost 1 and drew 3 out of 4 games, 3/12. Arsenal won 2, drew 2, lost 0, 8/12 points. Still lost because of too many fuck-ups vs rest of the field.

Madrid won the h2h vs us that season btw. 3-1 and 1-2. So the league was actually won by us vs rest of the field, which was and still is made entirely of teams weaker than Barca on paper.

Yep that's where the league is decided, 4 games we play against Madrid and atletico while it would be great if we win them all, if we get 6 points from those and crush the other games, we should be challenging at the end.

Flick said something similar so at least he understands that he needs to have the players super focused on these games.

 

[jamrock]

85 points is a meh season, he needs 92+

 

[iniestaGOAT]

XAVI HERNANDEZ would have 85+ season easily.
We will see what FLICK is really made of.
XAVI with OLMO is a different beast

My prediction 75+

 

[JamDav1982]

85 and another Europe failure and early cup exit is not good enough.

Not just for the failures in those other two but in the fact they would have also had easier schedule than Real probably and still getting 85.

Now if 85 wins it.. different matter but that appears impossible.

 

[ajnotkeith]

85 points is a meh season, he needs 92+

Needs 92+ to win maybe, but I don't think achieving that is realistic at the moment.

 

[ajnotkeith]

I mean feck, Xavi made 85 last season and the team had many fuck-ups vs teams we should have beaten easily. Wasted 8-10 points in an absurd manner.

And also made 88 the season before so not that different. As mentioned main difference was Madrid's performance.

I know what your response will be to this and I advise you to consider how it applies to the post that I am quoting here.

 

[jamrock]

And also made 88 the season before so not that different. As mentioned main difference was Madrid's performance.

I know what your response will be to this and I advise you to consider how it applies to the post that I am quoting here.

We phoned it in once the league was secure, so that's not really a correct comparison if we are being honest.

 

[ajnotkeith]

We phoned it in once the league was secure, so that's not really a correct comparison if we are being honest.

And what happened last season where we 'made 85'?

That was my point, 85 last season is a bit of a positive way to spin it when we were always miles off and cut the gap when the league was already over.

In contrast with the season before where we were practically always ahead and lost some points after we had already won it.

So it is always contextual, we'll have to keep that in mind when evaluating Flick's season, it's hard to set the target without seeing how strong Madrid is or if they start slowly etc.