Lliga | Round 34: Alaves - FC Barcelona 0-2

[eaman]

For the 11 years that Messi has been our number one player, there have been several occasions in which we had great games without him. It seems to me that when the players know that Messi will not be available beforehand, they tend to raise their game. When Messi is on the pitch, our players too often expect him to make the difference. Even worse, when Messi is having a bad day, the rest of our players tend to play even worse themselves.

Some of our great games w/o Messi (off the top of my head) Barca-Inter (2010, GS 2-0) Barca-Real Madrid (2015/16 4-0) both games against Inter this season, Barca- Real Madrid 5-1 this season. I am sure I am forgetting some more.

We probably would have played better in those games with Messi on the pitch. He has played in a few games where we have hammered real Madrid as well so it's not like that was a new thing. Inter are a bang average team and we probably would have put more than two past them if he was there. We also probably would have beaten them at the San Siro this season if he was there to finish some the chances we got. Look we have good players who can play well on many when he's not there but play better when he's there. Remember they have also struggled on plenty of occasions when he's not there

 

[Horatio]

For the 11 years that Messi has been our number one player, there have been several occasions in which we had great games without him. It seems to me that when the players know that Messi will not be available beforehand, they tend to raise their game. When Messi is on the pitch, our players too often expect him to make the difference. Even worse, when Messi is having a bad day, the rest of our players tend to play even worse themselves.

Some of our great games w/o Messi (off the top of my head) Barca-Inter (2010, GS 2-0) Barca-Real Madrid (2015/16 4-0) both games against Inter this season, Barca- Real Madrid 5-1 this season. I am sure I am forgetting some more.

We played well without Messi during the first half of 2015/2016 season when Messi was injured and Neymar played his best game for us.
After that matches turned poor without him. Same goes for the whole of 2016/2017. Since Valverde team has been playing better in his absence again.