Xavi Hernández

[jamrock]

Khalid makes some good points about the midfielders showing for the ball, they were way too far up the pitch, I completely agree.

 

[Total-Football]

Xavi has no excuses. U don't need world class players in every position to compete and command respect from opponents. We dominated the world with valdes and lord oleguer as a right back. 0 excuses. He has a great squad.

 

[Kul_z]

Khalid makes some good points about the midfielders showing for the ball, they were way too far up the pitch, I completely agree.

Thats when frenkie steps in, his ball carrying like some experts on barca forum usually like to say about him could come handy. Deploys a pass and then running in the box to finish/decoy/draw some players out of their positions. Not on 20m waiting, but going in the 16m.

And yes, #benchbusquets

 

[jamrock]

Thats when frenkie steps in, his ball carrying like some experts on barca forum usually like to say about him could come handy. Deploys a pass and then running in the box to finish/decoy/draw some players out of their positions. Not on 20m waiting, but going in the 16m.

And yes, #benchbusquets

Not the point he was trying to make or what I agreed to though.

The point was that our two CM were too far up the pitch and not showing for the ball, receive the ball, pass the ball, move and repeat.

In the words of pep. Take the ball, pass the ball.

In essence we had 1 DM, and two AM, no CM.
Frnkie running into the opposition box wouldn't have helped that.

Our lines just need to be more compact for our play to work better & that's all on xavi.

We have too many players in our midfield that are ball carriers in one form or the other.

 

[jamrock]

Pedri 48 passes
Gavi 28
Says it all really.

 

[khaled_a_d]

Thats when frenkie steps in, his ball carrying like some experts on barca forum usually like to say about him could come handy. Deploys a pass and then running in the box to finish/decoy/draw some players out of their positions. Not on 20m waiting, but going in the 16m.

And yes, #benchbusquets

De Jong done it when we were in our own half for sure.
But then when we are in Rayo's half? ball moved between players and suddenly he and Kessie moved very high on the pitch

 

[JohnN]

% of wins with peak, or old Messi vs no Messi in a rebuilding team is a useless stat really. We were headed for mid-table last season without xavi and ended pretty high if I remember correctly.

 

[JamDav1982]

Barca were going to be nowhere near mid table.

They were six points off top four with little seen of Pedri and Dembele and without the Jan spend.

Folk love to spin the yarn about how bad Barca were before Xavi came in.

 

[JohnN]

We were absolute crap and everyone rightly so, wanted koeman gone and bring someone like ten hag, who is looking great at united btw.
Xavi made this team watchable and competitive again. I can't know if stars were aligned for him with injured players coming back or not, but I do know with koeman, even if we spent 500m we would still look crap.

 

[jamrock]

Xavi got a bunch better team that koeman though, but we were Terrible under Keoman to think any different is just to spin a narrative.

The question is whether we would have improve under Keoman with all the new signings to the extent we did under xavi, until things started to fall apart in the end.

 

[ajnotkeith]

We were absolute crap and everyone rightly so, wanted koeman gone and bring someone like ten hag, who is looking great at united btw.
Xavi made this team watchable and competitive again. I can't know if stars were aligned for him with injured players coming back or not, but I do know with koeman, even if we spent 500m we would still look crap.

Xavi didn't look any better with the same set of players.

When Pedri + Dembele + Ferran + Auba came in January it revitalised our season, for obvious reasons. We went from a 2nd division attack to Dembele Auba Ferran. That shouldn't be misattributed to Xavi, though he had a great spell through Jan April with wins against top teams.

Better than Koeman, but that's not a high standard.

 

[JamDav1982]

Koeman should have gone in summer once the board undermined him. Was shit show and poorly handled from top.

That and lying to coach about Messi and taking away player team is built on days before season starts all led to shambles of a situation for beginning of season.

Spinning a yarn to make out Barca were headed for mid table and Xavi came in and turned it all around although did to well to get second but had second best squad in league and no other decent team bar Real.

 

[MTL_Barca]

Kinda weird how Xavi of all people sets up the midfield like that. You'd think if anyone knows how that's done it's him

 

[jamrock]

He thinks he has some kinda genius tactics but the players just aren't implementing it correctly.

 

[JamDav1982]

Strange tactics for players he has as well.

Look at the wide players... Fati, Raphinha, Torres, Auba all are more or less wide forwards or AMs that want to drift inside and be nearer to penalty area.. but he has them playing as touchline wingers getting ball on outside with two defenders between them and CF 30/40 yds away majority of time.

Same with mids... Busi is far too slow to be a sole DM both with and without the ball.. while Gavi, FDJ, Kessie etc none of them suit being AMs supporting a striker inbetween lines. Pedri is more suited but even then is restricted.

The best Barca have looked is when FDJ dropped deep to protect Busi and offered for ball from defence and had more license to get up and down pitch but Xavi abandoned that as soon as teams worked out just sit deep and get five at back and show Barca ball wide.

FDJ was absolutely world class v Real and Napoli etc when played like that and arriving late forward he was having more impact in final third than other mids have.