After Neymar left us and we got battered by Madrid in the '17 Supercup Barca fans were talking about the end of an era and how the team was supposedly finished.
Okay...
When Neymar left, the Barca 'system' had already been
stagnant for a year or so. The MSN scored a lot of goals, but that was it. Though Iniesta was rapidly ageing, but the midfield was still sort of good and good enough to play an attacking type of game, where the defense was quite bad, but the MSN solely compensated for that.
That is why Enrique left, because he was wise enough to realize those tendencies.
You mention doubles, trophies, but those are simply results, that have little to do with the
actual quality of play or style.
Fast forward almost two years and two domestic doubles later under Valverde and it's all because of Messi and Valverde deserves no credit. Funny how that works.
It's not really ' funny' how it works, it's rather very sad.
Barca has and had quite a few world-class individual players, who could easily win games and that works like a
force of inertia. The show goes on by itself...
Regardless who the coach is, what system he imagines, those talents are capable of dragging along the team and results as well.
Valverde deserves little to no credit, because although he knew
changes are inevitable, but he saw the direction towards a certain regressive path, that is actually alien to any Barca tradition or state of the art attacking game-approach. He wanted a much more defensive team, with 4-4-2 and did not realize that it simply won't work here.
Barca is not a mid-table Liga team, but he formed the TEAM as if it was one.
A dull, slow, sometimes good, sometimes bad team, that only
cares for acceptable results and nothing more.
Last year Suarez was still himself, Messi did his wonders. That was domestically enough.
But this season Valverde was simply saved due to the flounder of both Madrid's teams, Messi's constant form and last but not least, due to the form and development of Ter Stegen.
With a 2016-2017 Ter Stegen, a Pique in worse form, without a Dembele who won quite a few games, and without a Messiah Messi, this team could have easily been
ranked 3rd or 5th in LaLiga.
Change will come soon as these players will all be gone within 3-5 years, but until then any manager whether it be Valverde or someone else is going to have to have them in their plans.
No sane manager inherits the 'untouchable' status of those players.
They could play, but only if their performances dictate that merit.
Pique is of the same age as Suarez, but there is a huge difference between the decline of them. If they show no signs of rapid declination, why not play them? But if the quality fall is even obvious in the kinder-garden, some gradual changes are inevitable.
The time has passed for this team in Europe. They just simply cannot handle high tempo away matches anymore. That isn't Valverde's fault.
With Valverde's mediocrity, away games are played the exact same, apart from using a pseudo 4-4-2. No 'tactics' whatsoever.
Those games are rarely won because he is "happy" with 0:0, with very lucky wins, soulless performances, etc. The "we had the ball" mentality.
Otherwise everything is Valverde's fault, simply because the coach has to take responsibility for both results and the game-play.
It was his task to mentally prepare the team for the Anfield game, which he failed to even try, the 4th goal clearly shows that.
But no wonder if Valverdes sour-cucumber face, his pre-prepared dull sentences and platitude words are unable to enthuse any players. A very different type of coach would be needed for that...