There is sure as hell much more than humour about the impressive blond.. Now i know the reason for the lack of attention these days but forgiven seeing it was a Barca cause.
Didnt get the purple substitution bit. Explain to me later.
I'm no Bojan fan and concede he is overhyped by majority culés but I would disagree about the highlighted bit. If anything his qualities as a striker allows him to seamlessly integrate in to our team. And wht with him being Barca programmed from an early age, he also understands our style of play. His game strts/goal ratio is at 0.65 which is fantastic for a striker of his age. When he is given a string of games, he almost always delivers. The prob is not lack of talent or effort but favouritism from Pep who can be very stubborn at times. Its a known fact by now that he has his favs and invests more faith in them over some of the others. This means playing time isnt fairly distributed on a deserving basis. There is discrepancy in the way he manages his players. Had Pep shown as much confidence in Bojan as he did with Pedro, i see no reason why the former wouldn't 've been as successful.
As for the main topic in discussion, Pep isn't very comfortable with the idea of rotation. As Bojan pointed out, Pep more often than not was forced to 'rotate' due to suspensions, injuries or dip in form. Hardly does he rotate to rest his players. How many times did we see us winning by a huge margin in the 08/09 season, yet the likes of Xavi and Eto'o were played till the final whistle when the bench (Hleb, Bojan, Bus etc) could've easily filled in for them towards the end.
About the Max-Abi subject, the rare games the Brazilian started prior to Abi's injury was more a case of getting him integrate in to our team than trying to rest Abi. If Pep rated Maxwell then Abidal wouldn't ve been rushed bck from his flu for the Inter grp match. Then Maxwell's max game time came from the Abi's long injury absence. I highly doubt he would've seen those 7 matches in his sec season.
If all our first choice are fit and available, Pep rarely rotates. Even his tactical substitutions are late and done with much reluctance(or so it seems).
The stats also reinforces our over-reliance on Xavi and his importance to this team. Hence the need for a quality backup (not tht Pep will use him )
Didnt get the purple substitution bit. Explain to me later.
I did think it was a funny choice, as I thought Bojan would be the jewel Pep was grooming, but I've said since the beginning of last season when Bojan started playing again that I don't see him reaching the heights we thought he would. He is an average player, above average at times, but is not the player for Barca. It's sad considering we had hyped him up so much, but when you have players around him improving at a phenominal rate, Bojan's lack of improvement really shows.
I'm no Bojan fan and concede he is overhyped by majority culés but I would disagree about the highlighted bit. If anything his qualities as a striker allows him to seamlessly integrate in to our team. And wht with him being Barca programmed from an early age, he also understands our style of play. His game strts/goal ratio is at 0.65 which is fantastic for a striker of his age. When he is given a string of games, he almost always delivers. The prob is not lack of talent or effort but favouritism from Pep who can be very stubborn at times. Its a known fact by now that he has his favs and invests more faith in them over some of the others. This means playing time isnt fairly distributed on a deserving basis. There is discrepancy in the way he manages his players. Had Pep shown as much confidence in Bojan as he did with Pedro, i see no reason why the former wouldn't 've been as successful.
As for the main topic in discussion, Pep isn't very comfortable with the idea of rotation. As Bojan pointed out, Pep more often than not was forced to 'rotate' due to suspensions, injuries or dip in form. Hardly does he rotate to rest his players. How many times did we see us winning by a huge margin in the 08/09 season, yet the likes of Xavi and Eto'o were played till the final whistle when the bench (Hleb, Bojan, Bus etc) could've easily filled in for them towards the end.
About the Max-Abi subject, the rare games the Brazilian started prior to Abi's injury was more a case of getting him integrate in to our team than trying to rest Abi. If Pep rated Maxwell then Abidal wouldn't ve been rushed bck from his flu for the Inter grp match. Then Maxwell's max game time came from the Abi's long injury absence. I highly doubt he would've seen those 7 matches in his sec season.
If all our first choice are fit and available, Pep rarely rotates. Even his tactical substitutions are late and done with much reluctance(or so it seems).
The stats also reinforces our over-reliance on Xavi and his importance to this team. Hence the need for a quality backup (not tht Pep will use him )
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