Gaudi
Senior Member
"I may lose the Europa League, but never custody of my son" - Xavi
He owns MAdrid
Some explanation?
"I may lose the Europa League, but never custody of my son" - Xavi
He owns MAdrid
Some explanation?
The Cl?sico result has left a lot of doubts at Real Madrid. [MENTION=8305]Marc[/MENTION]a #rmalive
XAVI has REAL MADRID and That clown BRACILLIANT rattled.
We will have to wait until one of 2 things happen. If both things happen then we can even challenge for CL imo in 2 years.
a) we will have few injuries and we will get to play our best 11 vs teams like Bayern, United etc.
b) we will improve financially a lot to make sure we have a squad with bench players of real quality, not filler type like we have now.
I think we have shown away to Bayern that with the best 11 (sort of, since that game, Balde grew a lot and became a starter at LB) we can take on any team and make it a competitive game. In that first half on Allianz if we receive that clear pen and score the chances, we probably win the game.
The bench is fine, it could do with a couple more additions but in general we should work with what we already have and get the best out of it.
After all, a guy like Ferran was a rotation player at City despite how supposedly terrible it is to have him on the bench. If he's good enough to rotate for sheikh owned City, why not for us? Kessie too, who's proving he is more than solid to be a backup and has upside. Raphinha will be bench when Dembele comes back and he starts for Brazil. There's no way these guys are just 'filler' quality and not good enough to be BENCH players.
If the bench is fine, then we need 2-3 starters. Bench looked terrible vs Madrid, filled with a bunch of Barca B players and Roberto, Garcia, which do not belong in the squad of a team that aspires to be elite.
If Ferran and Raphinha are solid squad players, which they are, then you need starting LW. If Kessie is good squad player, which he is, you need starting DM. Starting RB as well. Squad is not great no matter how you look at it when you compare to teams like City, Bayern etc.
We can't work with what we already have if we plan to aim extremely high, such as competing for CL. Laporta and the rest of the board need to find us some cheaper hits for not a lot of money.
If we fix LW, DM, RB positions then yes, we will have a squad up there with the best. That's 3 top players we have little options to get soon though.
Roberto already belonged in several elite squads. And belonged well at that.
You can't really improve these type of guys for the bench because no great players come to be bench players. You are mostly just going to have B tier players for your bench, even getting players like Kessie or Raphinha there is a luxury because they can comfortably be starters in slightly worse teams (see Kessie AC Milan). Or guys like Alonso who wasn't too long ago a starter for a CL winning team. How can he not be enough for the bench?
We do have a couple holes in the team, but all squads do, even the best ones. Depending on the module going forward, if we stick with this quasi 4-4-2 style game, LW and DM might not even need to be fixed (for now).
Kounde at RB has also been working well given Xavi wants his RB to stay back and form a back 3 of sorts, though we could do with more depth at fullback.
Just keep going with these guys, get them some more experience and leave them to gel together instead of adding a bunch of new players. The young players are improving and players like Kessie are growing into the team.
Xavi: ?You win in Madrid & you don't seem to be convincing; if it were the other way around, it would be a national holiday.?
VARDRID in bracilliant in shambles after that comment from XAVI
You do realise the season is not over, right?
You do realise we have been dumped out of the EL for the SECOND year running, right??
The way you're going on, you would have thought that Xavi beat Real Madrid in CL FINAL.
We have a 7 point lead and only a few months to go, so we can afford to lose 2 games and draw 1 without going behind.
7 points doesn't sound like that much but it really is hard to cut down.
Should be able to get LL this season given Madrid have been less than consistent too.