Messi scored against all of those teams and assisted against 2. So, again, I ask where exactly he fell short this season? His "disappointing" game at Anfield was actually a great game by pretty much every player's standards, you can't generate all the offense and then score every fucking time.
No it was not. It was only a great game if you pretend it is normal for Messi to be excused from having to do work without the ball. Then in this case, yea, he had a good game because in the limited amount of times he was on the ball, he made some nice passes.
But in professional football at very high level, where both what you do with the ball, as well as what you do without it matters, Messi, also considering he was the captain of a team who collapsed like panicked schoolboys, did certainly NOT have a good game.
Basically, the Messi fan speech is Messi is amazing because he does this or that with the ball, but he is not bad because he doesn't do this or that WITHOUT the ball, because he is Lionel Messi and others have to carry his shit and make up for his flaws. And then they pretend that the flaws and the bad stuff he does on the pitch do not exist.
We just got beat 4-0 by a bunch of hardworking inspired Liverpool players, with average technique and average talent, and here we are saying our captain had a great game.
It was a match where our best players put in a 4/10 performance. Even if you say Messi was our best player, he was still mediocre, which is the most generous adjective you could use to describe his performance as a Barcelona captain (again something the Messi fans completely ignores, his responsibility as the captain of the team).