First off, people on here have every right to idolize Pep. He’s not perfect; his demands can wear down some players and it’s why he talks so much about mentality if you listen to him. Yaya, Eto’o, Ibrah, Deco, Ronaldinho, they were outstanding individuals but it’s all about the team. People confuse that for him wanting to “dominate” people, not realizing a key part of what being in a team means. He’s gotta manage a couple dozen relationships and think about every player before making a decision and with that team-first ethos being his expectation, I don’t think he really has time for players trying to put their egos and emotions in way of the team. Certain managers thrive on using the players emotions to get the best out of them; Pep is firery in his demands and desire to win but otherwise, he’s not that sort of manager. Certain players need that, others don’t.
His man management is definitely his weakest aspect but he makes up for it with his other attributes. He just needs players who are humble and not all about themselves. He’s certainly a modern tactician but he is very old school in a lot of his methods, something I’ve always particularly enjoyed about him.
I still have mixed feelings on EV; last season was strange. He’s a very logical guy and I appreciate that about him. The squad was very limited last season and with what he had to work with, he did well. But we absolutely had to stop Real in the CL and we didn’t for one reason or another. On one hand, I get why he has us in a 4-4-2 at times, we’ve simply been playing more direct and less positional football since Tata so why go against that trend? And as we all know, kinda hard to play our football with Paulinho and Gomes as your interiors. I personally am not particularly fond of seeing us in a double pivot; it played its part in our struggles against Chelsea and the Roma meltdown and the trend of Dembele coming off for Arturo is worrying to me, but really up until this summer, I got why he did it.
This season however, I’ll be judging him a little more closely because now he has the squad. This is a strong team that has enough players that can win games at different levels. Outside of Luis, I’m not worried about the starting 11, it’s how Arthur, Arturo, Roberto, Malcolm and Rafinha are utilized this season. If we wanna win the CL this season, particularly with our group, he’s gotta be able to trust our squad players with points on the line in La Liga. Only way he does that is by not only giving them minutes but chances to succeed and shine by putting them in the right situations, in the right positions within the right systems. Outside of Arturo, most of those players are going to need the 4-3-3 to shine imo so I’d really like to see that be our main formation and use the double pivot for strictly for situational play.
So yeah, I say we chill on the EV bashing for now but I’ll always love Pep. For the record, if he had half of Zidane’s luck, we’d have won 4 CLs in a row. Why do you think he first went to study Pep?
. We had an excellent defensive record last season and conceded far less compared to previous season . Allowed Chelsea to play possession game and it was almost 50/50 at one stage and still won 3-0 . Willian troubling us was more of Roberto being so poor . Apart from that we defended well and kept them under lid without conceding many
