Please no. Xavi will just set us back another five years. Endless sideways and backwards passing.
I think it depends really because Xavi does have his team playing good fast attacking football. People will say well yeah that's only in Qatar but surely if he can get a group of much less talented individuals to play a certain way, he should be able to transmit that to players of better quality and experience.
I do understand your possession argument though, because I see Barca's possession game in two eras, the successful 2008-11 era and the sterile, slow build-up era from late 2011-2014. The 2008-11 era was possession football that was both attacking with intent and aggressive. Wingers provided plenty of width but were also perfectly good technical footballers and had plenty of goals in them, pressing was aggressive (6 second rule) and of course, the orchestraors, Xavi & Iniesta, were younger and fresher.
Once 2012 rolled along, we swapped the more dynamic, athletic players with players like Cesc who were comfortable playing in the middle, thus our game became more compact and had less speed, too many players need the ball to feet, we lost power, movement and runners too, like we had with Henry, Eto'o, Villa pre injury. Xavi of course was older so the slower possession game suited him better than the quicker aggressive play from three years earlier.
Now my hope for Xavi if he does become manager, recognizes that it was the aggresive possession era (08-11) that was effective and not possession for possesion's sake (12-14). Of course the ability to play this also depends on the personnel available to you.
