Paco was given the respect needed at Barcelona, both by directors and players. The fact he never adapted to the system is visible when you rewind all his Barca matches played and also statistics. Lucho played him mostly as CF as a sidekick to Suarez, he tried to act in David Villa way, it didn't work. Valverde experimented with Paco in both CF and RW roles, all in all it was mostly the Sevilla game he'll be remembered at Barcelona. To think he was about to explode in his third season at Barcelona without any proof or sign in training and friendlies this summer is just nonsense wishfull Real Madrid fan's troll talk.
No doubt, in my mind, the 2015/16 and 2016/17 summer transfer windows at FC Barcelona turned out the worst signings for the club since 2001. Except for Umtiti.
I wouldn't compare Paco to Mayoral or anyone outside the club. Some of you probably remember Santiago Ezquerro...
Technically Jasper was a really good signing as well for our Backup GK during that season.
The 2016/17 transfer Window I got the idea why we made the signings. The team needed some younger players. We needed a couple of CMs, a LB, a CB and later on a GK due to Bravo leaving and a striker.
The likes of Digne and Paco weren't our first choice targets. We were after the likes of Raphael Guerreiro for the LB spot long before Digne but he turned us down for BVB. In the Front line we were interested in the likes of Dembele,Vietto,Gamerio etc but all three turned us down because of gametime concerns.
Digne came out of nowhere and same reason with Paco somewhat. Paco was like the 5th choice down the list. Denis had a good season at Villarreal so we decided to activate the buyback clause and Gomes? that one I could understand that why we wanted him. A lot of clubs were after him and we took a bet on his potential.
in summary the 2016/17 Window was us trying to bet on a number of players so called potential as they were around the 1993-4 Generation. But it failed for the most part, with Umtiti being the only stand out player that window.
