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behindbrowneyes
Well-known member
Probably not the right moment to bring this up as Xavi had one week for preparation, but there is a big difference between big teams who play literally every 3 days and smaller ones who only have league and some Cup matches. Also to note that there is no training possible during international breaks as most of the squad is travelling the world to compete with their national teams. For them just to return totally exhausted from playing and travelling.
Under these circumstances, big teams don't have much time to actually work with their players. Work=training
Don't think there will be intense training sessions during season when you play all 3 days. Most of the time will be used for regeneration and then you also have to travel to away games which is usually once a week, sometimes even twice. Then you have some promotion games during the off-season, players returning late from vacay because there was a World Cup, Copa America etc.
In conclusion, you have much less time for preparation, trainings compared to smaller teams who don't have all that in that extent.
Take Girona. Most of the season they play once a week. Which means they have 4 to 5 days they can actually work with players and prepare for the game on the weekend. No travels during the week. Just training. Key players will be rested due to that and if Michel wants to he can field the same team every weekend since rotations aren't really necessary because his players get enough rest.
We could argue that a game is a better practice than a training session, but I don't agree with that. What you have written about EPL underlines my point.
Pep recently complained about scheduling and here is his take on that topic. I agree with that and can follow his reasoning. Worth a read: https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/ne...congestion-good-food-needs-time-to-be-cooked/
There's always one or two higher midtable teams that get things right, every single season. Doesn't mean it's reproducable or the coaches are geniuses or the money spend doesn't matter. It's the most retarded argument in football.
It's a numbers game. From 20+ of those teams one or two will have a standout season. Usually it's not enough to win big titles though. And they probably don't understand either why things clicked for them.
Is this on Xavi?
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Same could be said for Xavi's season last year. How did we get away with eleven 1-0 victories? It's not been reproducable as can be seen this year. And he probably knows why (teams were missing absolute sitters and ter stegen had an amazing season). He doesn't have a clue why it happened tactically though. Luckily for us the numbers game of having many millions more than 95% of the league meant we could win it on player quality alone.
Fati_Future_BallonDor
Well-known member
Koeman > Xavi > Setien 💯
Iniesta Ultra
Senior Member
What % of our underperformed xG is by players Xavi recruited?
Iniesta Ultra
Senior Member
That's one of the main problems with Xavi, he wants his players to perform as robots. Maybe he'll progress to getting them as xenobots instead.
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Windhook
Well-known member
2 players failed miserably last night and it's Xavi's fault.
Raphinha - wasted some great goal scoring chances calmly, "don't worry, I'll score on my 26th attempt".
Balde - lost 3 balls in midfield to Girona that cost us about 7-8 minutes out of possesion around the 70th minutes. Barca lost the incentive.
Honorable mention to Lewa for being on and off. That final minute of header, that hit his shoulder was the final curtain of this agony of season in La Liga. No title this season.
Xavi's style is entertaining, creating tons of chances but leaves a lot of space for counter attacks this season. That wasn't the case last year.
Raphinha - wasted some great goal scoring chances calmly, "don't worry, I'll score on my 26th attempt".
Balde - lost 3 balls in midfield to Girona that cost us about 7-8 minutes out of possesion around the 70th minutes. Barca lost the incentive.
Honorable mention to Lewa for being on and off. That final minute of header, that hit his shoulder was the final curtain of this agony of season in La Liga. No title this season.
Xavi's style is entertaining, creating tons of chances but leaves a lot of space for counter attacks this season. That wasn't the case last year.
serghei
Senior Member
Team is having a bad season, with many blunders in defense and shit finishing in offense. This kills any form of consistenty in the league.
Can't do much but try to improve and correct these fuck-ups, which are mostly individual. Set-up is not amazing, sure, but other than the Sociedad game where the team got dominated for large spells, in almost every match where we ended up losing points, we shot ourselves in the foot like idiots with shit finishing and rookie mistakes in defense.
Can't do much but try to improve and correct these fuck-ups, which are mostly individual. Set-up is not amazing, sure, but other than the Sociedad game where the team got dominated for large spells, in almost every match where we ended up losing points, we shot ourselves in the foot like idiots with shit finishing and rookie mistakes in defense.
The xG is a key detail though. Over the course of the match we create alot of chances, and if you watch the match, alot of those were high quality ones where we should have done better.
Doesn't excuse the shithole defensive system and getting sliced to butter by Girona though.
But we score in the right moments and on another day this game is a pummeling like the GIrona versus Madrid game was.
Still, breath of fresh air to see Girona keep going forward rather naively and grab a historic win.
Now time for Xavi to get his shit together and our attack to try and actually take their chances. Absolutely no point playing so well and beating Atletico to then go and lose to Girona a week later.
Doesn't excuse the shithole defensive system and getting sliced to butter by Girona though.
But we score in the right moments and on another day this game is a pummeling like the GIrona versus Madrid game was.
Still, breath of fresh air to see Girona keep going forward rather naively and grab a historic win.
Now time for Xavi to get his shit together and our attack to try and actually take their chances. Absolutely no point playing so well and beating Atletico to then go and lose to Girona a week later.
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