La Liga (Week 9): Tuesday, 25 October, 2011
Granada vs FCBarcelona @ 8PM Barcelna Time

`Barca Squad traveling to Granada: Cuenca, Montoya & 17 first team players IN
Puyol, Alexis, Pique, Afellay Out

Puyol & Pique should be ready for Saturday's match vs Mallorca, Alexis should join Squad training on Wednesday.

Messi to perform an epic comeback after 2 games of not scoring

Barca to dominate… nothing less

Line-up Predictions?

3-4-3? or 4-3-3?

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Preferably? 4-3-3, we played so much better against Sevilla when we used it. Granada don't have nearly as good a defence though... so it doesn't really matter.

Alves-Mascherano-Abidal-Maxwell
Xavi-Busquets-Iniesta
Pedro-Messi-Villa

The Sevilla game was interesting in the fact that it resembled the Valencia game in the way we set up.
Started with a 3-4-3 but didnt work.
Except this time Pep didnt wait till the second half to make the switch to 4-3-3.
He switched in the 15 min itself.
I think that may have been the reason he started with Adriano.So that if it didnt work he could change quickly.
Sign of a great manager.Shows he learns from his mistakes.
But I remain convinced that he has not given up on the 3-4-3.Now that Cesc is back expect to see more of it.
3-4-3 in this game and please play Busquets over Keita.

Barca: Valdés; Alves, Mascherano, Abidal, Maxwell; Sergio, Xavi, Cesc; Cuenca Messi y Pedro

Granada: Roberto; Nyom, Iñigo, Mainz, Siqueira; Jaime, Mikel, Fran Rico, Benítez; Abel Gómez, Uche.

Is this the worst game that messi has played since.... ever?

messi flop of the match easily, he lost his form

Messi's was off form but the one im concerned about is Pedro.....cuenta played way better than him today and his injury was just the icing on the cake

Messi was selfish a couple times when he could have passed it but hes been selfish before and finished the goal by himself with out the help of his team mates.

Passing in the final third needs to be more crisp which is why messi should not take all of the blame and finishing needs to be on target at the very least.

To many times today shots were flying over the bar

Never the less good game with barca keeping most of the possession as usual....

Messi looked quite bad today by his standards. Even then, he was the one that got closest to scoring from open play.

Its not just that messi was selfish. Sometimes when he was going to pass a player that was 2-3 meter away from him, he would pass it to a opponent. He did that several times.

Messi most be exhausted or something. Pep should probably rest him, but im afraid that our other forwards are also out of form or atleast their finishing..

To me Messi has been off point since the international break.

He was closest to scoring because granada defender made mistake. other than that he had 1 shot whole game, only 1 successful dribbling, missplaced passes and lazy actions

Messi's worst game since a long time

I agree that he may need rest he seemed very sluggish

Goes to show why we need depth in the forward line. With Afellay and Alexis out, we're in crisis mode. Pedro is not playing well, Villa is not finishing well and we depend too much on Messi to the point where we drive him to exhaustion - but have no real alternatives. Granted, we're unlucky to have 2 players out, but it was not exactly unforeseeable either.

Also, this was a bad match by Messi, but the worst player in the pitch was Pedro, by far.

Kiko should be traveling w/ the team not Cuenca. I'm not hating on him, but just stating my opinion.

billionmillion wrote:messi flop of the match easily, he lost his form

Class is permanent .

Messi needs rest its obvious.. he played his worst match in last 3 seasons.. miss passes, selfish, bad finish...
We are not playing our best, True.. but in the last 3 matches:
We had no luck, which we need "& every team needs it" especially against Vikoria & Sevilla! We are jinxed!!


Cuenca was fine, btw KIKO is not is playing very poor with Barca B, Cuenca is better imo! I hope Guardiola gives chance for Tello next time ( maybe in copa ).. towards the end of the season, i would like to see Deulofeu making his Deut..

Pedro is out for 10-15 days.. i think its gd news, he will have some rest inorder to improve his performance!!

Busquets was good today he is my man of the match.
Busquets, Xavi, Mascerano were the best 3 players. Busquets has lot of potential he can not show it in DM position. but he is one of the best passers and has a very good ball control

i'd rate like this
Valdes - NA (didnt touch the ball today)
Maxwell - 6.5 same old performance today easy work for him
Abidal - 6.5 same as maxwell
Alves - 6 didnt make any impat
Mascerano - 7.5 good tackles and boss of defence as always
Busquets - 8 his control and passes today was better than anyone
Xavi - 7.5 scored a goal and controlled midfield as always
Fabregas - 6.5 didnt make any impact
Pedro - 5.5 didnt make any impact and injured
Messi - 5.5 peregnant woman didnt even run after losing the ball
Guenca - 6 was fast and technical but not enough experience

About messi I’d like to add that not only he seemed tired but he seemed confused and frustrated as well.
Anyone might have an off day. The thing is when you do you should adapt accordingly.
I just can’t understand why he tried to dribble the whole Granada team when it was evidently he couldn’t yesterday.
His passing was awful as well. We are really unlucky Affelay is out for half the season. Considering Pedro’s form it would be his time to shine.
Hopefully with Alexis return we get an extra arrow in our quiver

I only could watch 30 minutes. We played atrociously, but as Keita was not playing, we won. (100% of matches won without Keita).

Firstly many congratulations to the maestro Xavi for becoming Barcelona's all time leading La Liga appearance maker. On this momentous day he did the one thing he almost never does - scored from a set piece.

About Messi being selfish, I find it a little queer that there are days when Messi does seem a little selfish and is trying to score when he should pass but it's also true that there are days when Messi seems a bit too intent on passing the ball and having someone else score rather than scoring himself. This kind of dual behavior confuses me at times. Maybe it's actually what alex had mentioned some time back that while Messi has nearly perfected several aspects of his game he still has some way to go to reach the Cruyff level of decision making.

Busquets being on the pitch gives better rhythm to our game and results in less conceding of possession.

As I have mentioned before Mascherano has been really good this season. You would hardly notice that he is actually not a center back. Maybe he is still not the best at playing the ball but he does give us such a strong sense of security at the back especially with Puyol's and Pique's absences and Abidal not being at his erstwhile levels.

Lastly I want to see us play 4-3-3 almost every time but I too think that Pep will persist with 3-4-3 at least for some more time. Don't be too surprised if that's how we line up for the first Classico. alex just said this and Pep's comments have also indicated the same that he believes Fabregas is the ideal player to use in a 3-4-3 setup. Maybe one reason Pep wanted Fabregas so badly was because he wanted to start using a 3-4-3 more and more. It might just be the case that Pep being a product of the original dream team has some kind of a deep fascination with that style of play and won't give up on it till he is 100% convinced it won't work any more.

Bad performance from what I could see, crap stream, dull game, tired...very hard to watch.

However, I take the positive. Other certain teams on their off days lose to Levante.

These scrappy 1-0 crud performances are crucial as they give you more room for error against the stronger team down the road.

Dont read much into Messi not playing well, its football, no player can stamp their will on the game every single time.