Xavi Hernández

[delancey]

Raphinha, for example, plays well with Brazil, which points to our tactics being the problem. Jeez, tonight was as bad as Valverde ball. At least we looked organized under Valverde.

 

[delancey]

Does Xavis brother analyze the opponent and adapt tactics accordingly? I mean, bros before hoes, right?

 

[iniestaGOAT]

Raphinha, for example, plays well with Brazil, which points to our tactics being the problem. Jeez, tonight was as bad as Valverde ball. At least we looked organized under Valverde.

He plays well cause he plays RW. That bum Dembele plays that position here.

Rapinha does not eveen play that well for brazil man stop exaggerating

 

[delancey]

He plays well cause he plays RW. That bum Dembele plays that position here.

Rapinha does not eveen play that well for brazil man stop exaggerating

We had two shots on goal. Against fcking Inter. With some of the most talented attackers in the world. The tactics sterilize our attack.

 

[Barcilliant]

Really interesting to see how Laporta reacts if we exit CL.
I think he will stick with Xavi till the end of the season. If we don't win La Liga he will terminate Xavi or Xavi himself will resign.

 

[delancey]

On a side note, Xavi looked hella nervous tonight.

This match could send us to the EL.

 

[TacticsTim]

The problem is that xavi wants barca to play slow, push themselves up really high basically the same thing that tata Martino and Seiten did. That's how barca has played the whole season but they do well because the team has really good individual players. The problem is xavis deluded idea of how barceona should play and I don't that nk it will change.

This is the same scenario as Lampard with Chelsea. Gdt Tuchel in and play strong dynamic fast football without this terrible slow possession

 

[te amo barca]

On a side note, Xavi looked hella nervous tonight.

This match could send us to the EL.

Think team has too much quality not to beat Inter at home. There will be more urgency and players will be motivated. Camp Nou support is great this season too.

 

[ajnotkeith]

The truth is Inter are not a very good team either, they offer little to nothing going forward and they had no pace in their team yesterday to counter with. You could see that they are 9th in Serie A for a reason. They've also conceded 13 goals there and it's only the start of October.

But we have still lost and scored no goals because Xavi finds 5 at the back impenetrable. Against teams with good fast attackers who play these formations we will struggle even worse like against Frankfurt, who played us off the pitch.

If Xavi wants to keep his job beyond this season scrapping this stupid Xaviball system should be the first step, or at least developing a new one as we continue in the season.

 

[delancey]

Think team has too much quality not to beat Inter at home. There will be more urgency and players will be motivated. Camp Nou support is great this season too.

I hope you are right. Thing in, now we have to win our next game against Inter. From a psychological perspective, this can be an uphill battle. All Inter has to do is sit back, counter, and play for a draw.

 

[ajnotkeith]

The main issue I have with Xavi is the lack of outlets provided to the player who holds the ball.
We can talk all we want about how passing CB is important and Araujo is bad at it, or how Pedri and Gavi are still kids and lack that playmaking ability...

BUT
Every pass has one at receiving end, and you will never be a good passer without having a good player to receive it and actually moving well enough to open passing lanes.

You look at our defense, and we are so dependent on passing to Busquets it is actually pathetic. There is no outlets from fullbacks or midfielders.
Only game we provided them with it was against Bayern, as Gavi and Pedri dropped deep and both had great game.

In attack, midfielders are so isolated, as wingers don't cut inside and stay wide, leaving out CF as sole option to pass and it is easy to neutralize a no9 if he is isolated.

The team is simply not built on a coherent way.

That is wild considering how Xavi always spoke about the importance of fullbacks and wingers players to support midfield (that was long before he joined Barca as a coach) and how he keeps talking about the positional ball.


Also [MENTION=29831]ajnotkeith[/MENTION] raises a good point about dealing with 3 atb, it is a kryptonite of our system and he has no answer to it.

It's like 90% of our attacks follow exact script :

CBs pass to Busquets
Busquets pass to Gavi or Pedri
Gavi or Pedri pass to Dembele
Dembele dribbles or crosses

And on repeat the entire game whenever we face good organised defenses. You can not find any top team with such a rigid attack like ours that follows the exact same sequence every single time.

As I mentioned it works ok against 4 ATB when the fullbacks are in 1v1 Vs the wingers, but when good teams begin to double them, we have no options and no ideas what to do.

For some reason, we played against a deep 5 ATB block yesterday and the fullbacks and midfielders weren't attacking the box. That is like the first rule of breaking down deep and dense defenses, you need overlaps from fullbacks and midfielders to attack the box to give the attack options.

I keep saying this but Spanish teams and coaches are very weak tactically and don't seem to realise yet how easy it is to give us problems if they sit in defense. We score a lot of goals in LaLiga because we play teams like Sociedad that do attacking 4-2-3-1 and leave miles of open space in defense.

 

[iniestaGOAT]

Think team has too much quality not to beat Inter at home. There will be more urgency and players will be motivated. Camp Nou support is great this season too.

That won't be enough. We need to draw/beat Munich at home too

I am counting on Munich self sabotaging and losing to inter last game

 

[Raketa10]

I can't stand our constant complaining about refereeing. If we played well we wouldn't care about that penalty. FFS Xavi, stop complaining and start improving our tactics!

 

[Messigician]

I can't stand our constant complaining about refereeing. If we played well we wouldn't care about that penalty. FFS Xavi, stop complaining and start improving our tactics!

I miss valverde

 

[Raketa10]

To be clear I am not saying that the referee was right. HELL NO, he and VAR made a huge mistake. However, if we played well that penalty probably wouldn't be so decisive. I can't understand that for the last 5 or 6 seasons we have no idea whatsoever how to play against teams that defend well. It all comes down to an individual inspiration. That has to change or we won't be able to beat any half decent team in Europe! What the hell is coaching stuff doing? How do we prepare for games? When Messi was here our attacking tactics were: "give the ball to Messi" and now our attacking tactics are "here is the ball do something with it or just cross it". Let's be honest, this is not how a top class European team should play.