Quique Setien

[KingLeo10]

Ernesto 'Sleepmaster' Valverde.

 

[Batistuta9]

Also, Messi needs to start accepting lesser wages as he is declining, as him hogging up 100 M in non-conducive to us signing quality young players.

CR7 is guilty of the same at Juventus with his 70 M salary when he offers nothing beyond a penalty box presence these days at 35+ years of age.

No wonder these clubs are marred by old, deadwood legs. If you look at their forums, they're moaning about a shit midfield all the time and how CR7 has no support.

In a perfect world, Messi and CR7 shouldn't be on the wages they are, judging on their current playing level. Football is a business these days and clubs don't throw away money for the sake of it (apart from us in the transfer market of course).

The clubs are looking at it from a business point of view, they bring us X amount, so we'll pay them Y amount. It's why Florentino started the galactico project with Beckham & co. After Messi and CR7 leave Barca and juve respectively, both clubs will take a financial hit.

 

[xXKonan]

I would want Xavi to start out with as little as some of the old guard that is left, with a new board and adding younger vets around the 26-27 range and having a good selection of younger players to fill in the mix to go along with the good ones we already have.

 

[Batistuta9]

I don't know how good xavi will be as manager, but he has the right personality to take over the current team.

He's probably one of the few people that the older players will respect. I don't know how true these stories are but when pep first arrived, there was supposed to be tension between etoo and pep, xavi was the one who smoothed it over and got everyone pulling in the same direction. He did the same thing with lucho and Messi after the loss to sociedad IIRC. Two trebles followed. If it's true, thank you xavi.

 

[JamDav1982]

I don't know how good xavi will be as manager, but he has the right personality to take over the current team.

He's probably one of the few people that the older players will respect. I don't know how true these stories are but when pep first arrived, there was supposed to be tension between etoo and pep, xavi was the one who smoothed it over and got everyone pulling in the same direction. He did the same thing with lucho and Messi after the loss to sociedad IIRC. Two trebles followed. If it's true, thank you xavi.

Some of Xavi comments just comes across that he would double down on being 'Barca DNA' approach and could go horribly wrong.

The one thing he should have it authority to make decisions but would not be surprised in slightest if he would still be huge fan of likes of Busquets.

 

[FinBarcelonafan]

I don't know. I have a weird feeling we are going to shithouse our way to the CL in this shortened campaign. Feel strongly about this. Setien won't leave after that.

Nah. Teams who surprise usually have good team play or team defense. We have none of those. If Messi does something unbelievable for all the KO games in a row it's possible but near miracle is needed.

 

[Horatio]

I am not writing barca off completely. With Messi being rested for every game he might pull off some miracles.

 

[vinni]

It looks the sacking of Valverde backfired. It introduced even more chaos in the club and the results/style are just as bad with Setien. In hindsight we should have kept Valverde.

For the next season, I only see two choices. If the dressing room got faith in Setien, then we stick with him. If they dont, get someone within the club that manage the team until we change the board. Ideally this person can get rid of some of the older guard, but that might be hard given that the board will be changed.

I suspect next season will be a season where we can't do any big changes since we don't know who will gouvern the club and we don't know what direction we will go in. It will just be a void with some bad fotball.

 

[FinBarcelonafan]

It looks the sacking of Valverde backfired. It introduced even more chaos in the club and the results/style are just as bad with Setien. In hindsight we should have kept Valverde.

For the next season, I only see two choices. If the dressing room got faith in Setien, then we stick with him. If they dont, get someone within the club that manage the team until we change the board. Ideally this person can get rid of some of the older guard, but that might be hard given that the board will be changed.

I suspect next season will be a season where we can't do any big changes since we don't know who will gouvern the club and we don't know what direction we will go in. It will just be a void with some bad fotball.

Backfired because Madrid had perfect reecord? Valverde wouldn't top Reals record. Real was too good.

 

[vinni]

Backfired because Madrid had perfect reecord? Valverde wouldn't top Reals record. Real was too good.

I don't think Madrid played that well this season. They played well after COVID (kinda) but they where just as bad as us before that.

 

[khaled_a_d]

Backfired because Madrid had perfect reecord? Valverde wouldn't top Reals record. Real was too good.

Real wasn't really that good at all.
And EV already knew the team and had respect of the players. There was a good chance that he would improve in 2nd half just as RM. Do we know that for sure? Nope, we don't have crystal ball and it might have been even worse.

But problem goes beyond results:
Setien used half of the season experimenting, we have tried so many formations, player roles change a lot. We had to play Valladolid with 352 because that is how they play and we need to counter that

Offense collapsed under him, and while our defense conceded less it is actually more vulnerable now as we leave our slow CB uncovered and give Semedo/Alba more attacking roles.

Firing coach midway in the season is very risky and rarely work, especially when you are still in contention for trophies. If new coach doesn't make improvements it usually backfires a lot and shows a lot of instability within the club.

That being said, Maybe this is what we needed, now people have finally shifted blame from coach who was punch bag for all our problem, to board and old squad.

 

[FinBarcelonafan]

We were playing worse and worse. Saying Valverde would have potentially improved us is... Questionable. I think people forget how dreadful we were before we fired him. You think Bartomeu would fire Valverde in the first place, first place in the CL and still in Copa if he played good football?? Team was already full of cracks and things were going worse and worse.

 

[khaled_a_d]

We were playing worse and worse. Saying Valverde would have potentially improved us is... Questionable. I think people forget how dreadful we were before we fired him. You think Bartomeu would fire Valverde in the first place, first place in the CL and still in Copa if he played good football?? Team was already full of cracks and things were going worse and worse.

He was fired after one of our better performance.

 

[Respekt_III]

We were playing worse and worse. Saying Valverde would have potentially improved us is... Questionable. I think people forget how dreadful we were before we fired him. You think Bartomeu would fire Valverde in the first place, first place in the CL and still in Copa if he played good football?? Team was already full of cracks and things were going worse and worse.

You misspelt delusional

 

[serghei]

This season was fucked since Liverpool 0-4 loss last season. It was that big of a disaster. Should have sacked Valverde last season and appointed a better manager in the summer.