Rayo - Barça, today at 20:00

That hurts my heart

We are officially past our prime

I didn't watch the first half, but I managed to watch the second half and  based on that I think some of you are over-reacting. I think human beings are naturally averse to change and we are seeing some of that here. Martino is definitely trying to build a team that can play on both possession and the counter, and we're seeing an unfinished product that doesn't quite look that good. None of the players have spoken against this and the ones that have commented on it (Alves, Pedro, Pique, Messi) have all praised it as the right way to go.

We all knew before Martino took over that he would change the game plan depending on the rival, and that is what we saw today. I don't think the last two games signify a change in our philosphy but merely a more pragmatic way to approach each game.

Are we betraying our philosphy? I don't think so, the elements of Cruyffism are still strong on this team, it is now simply more pragmatic. We are no longer purists. Does this make us less unique? Possibly. Is it wrong? I don't think so, there are many ways to win and clearly something had to change, I distinctly remember many users complaining last season that we squandered many good counters against parked buses because of our patient style.

Martino on his game plan today:

Martino wrote:"Sucede que el Rayo presiona mucho y muy alto, lleva la línea de cuatro a mitad de campo y a veces se hacía difícil poner el balón en juego desde nuestro propio arco. A veces en este tipo de partidos, con presión intensa del rival, es necesario para respirar un poco y poner el juego en otra zona del campo".

"Rayo presses very well and very high on the pitch, they defend with a very high line to the middle of the pitch and this made starting the play from the back sometimes difficult. Sometimes in this kind of match, with such an intense pressure from the rival, it is necessary to start the play long to have some breathing room."

Whatever, Martino is dead to me. Giving up possession is 100% absolutely unacceptable. If there's anybody competent left in management they should fire him first thing tomorrow morning and hand him over to the fashion police.

Stejo wrote:Whatever, Martino is dead to me. Giving up possession is 100% absolutely unacceptable. If there's anybody competent left in management they should fire him first thing tomorrow morning and hand him over to the fashion police.

You are funny.

Awesome game. Rayo werent bad, we were just awesome. The pressing is impressive, back to our best days WOOO HOOOO

Neymar showing his class again and so influential already!

Pedro with 3 tap ins XD Credit to him though!

Cesc with good goal and assist, happy with that.

Everybody on song. Our defense werent tested too much, but we were ok there. Song did well mostly, as with Montoya apart from early stages.

We just need to keep this up and we will be fine

Btw, that stadium is pretty crappy, no disrespect. 3 sides and 1 side is a few residential blocks? The bench is so small the players were bunched up uncomfortable. Compare that to the VIP race car seat at the Bernabeu XD

Wow @ the posts everyone else made. I think we have just gotten used to us dominating by far very game. That is not realistic as we have done that for sooo long now.

I dont agree our game is a mess now wtf, if not, we are much more effective. Players are getting into the box, unlike b4, we have only Messi or even NO ONE getting in the box when we create chances from out wide, it drove me crazy. Now we are hungry and everyone is joining in the attacking and getting into the positions to convert chances.

Our pressing is back needless to say. Whether we mix it up now or just focus on possession as b4, I like the way we mix it up now. To be more direct and effective when its more efficient rather than trying to keep ball even when it was very very difficult to, it eventually led to mistakes and tiredness, that was another thing that drove me crazy.

Rayo isnt top level opponent but they are decent I think, so Im happy with the game. We needed Valdes and got away with a few things, but we should not be too critical of our team I think!

Aimless long balls:facepalm: 
Playing so direct and on the counter:facepalm: 
Only 45 % possession against a scrub team:facepalm: 
Dont care about the result.That was not our philosophy of play on display there.I didnt agree with free after the Ajax game that we were moving away from Cruyffism.But this game,we definitely moved away from Cruyffism.Shout out to free.
We arent a Jose Mourinho underdog counter attacking team.We dont punt the ball aimlessly upfield hoping that someone runs onto it.We are Johan Cruyff's team and we play the Johan Cruyff way no matter what.
If this is how we intend to play this season,then I want Martino out.

Cesc once proves why he is the ultimate stat padder.Completely invisible throughout the game,yet gets assists and a goal.And people fall for it 
Second best player on our team and the best CAM in the world. 

I kind of believe that Tata is doing this to let our back line be test a bit more, or at least I hope. Training will only teach them so much, but actually feeling the pressure in games will teach them a lot look at VV after being left dry by our defence for about 2 season he's improve because of actually being pressured more and being called in for more action. I believe Tata is trying to do the same with our defence obviously Rayo don't have the best attackers in Europe, but its a beginning. I believe Rayo had about 7-8 shots on target, which Valdes saved. We didn't concede this game either, but a better team would make us regret it. Playing like this also prevents teams from parking the bus as well.

Lets not forget we didnt play buquets inista n alves, 3 players very good at keeping possession in comparison to Montoya, Song n Cesc, that helps explain the stats...

I think more possession = more parked bus by opposition. You should give them ball otherwise they will sit on defense all the game. I think this can help in big games, its like plan B

alexjanosik wrote:Cesc once proves why he is the ultimate stat padder.Completely invisible throughout the game,yet gets assists and a goal.And people fall for it 
Second best player on our team and the best CAM in the world. 

Cesc wasn't invisible. We didn't get the midfielders involved so how do you expect him to be very visible? Imo he had a solid game and added a goal and assist. Xavi was even more invisible than Cesc and could only add one assist. It's not xavi's fault, this kind of game doesn't suit him.

I want to say that I don't think this game was a one off. Except the Levante game, we have been playing like this (away from Cruyff tactics) all the other games, but we didn't have a rival that could challenge the domination of the game anf posession. Not only they had more possession but they attacked as much as we did.

Now we know why Rossell signed Tata, to end the last remaining influence of Cruyff, Guardiola and Laporta in the club: our footballing style.

I won't ask for Tata to be sacked, I still hope he wants to find a midway style like Rijkaard did and results so far are good, but it's not what I like and not what has worked at barça historically.

With every positive thing comes side effects. While Rayo pressed high up the pitch, they left acres of space in their midfield and at the back. Previously, Barcelona would try to play a risky game of building from the back when pressed, and even when they successfully strung a few passes and mitigate the pressure, they would act so slowly in reaching the opponent's goal that by the time the ball is in midfield, the opposition has had plenty of time to organise defence again. Frankly, you were not capitalising on the risks your opponents were taking.

Now I don't want to defend Martino but I think he is trying to make a point by making Barcelona play other styles. Since his arrival at the helm he made his mission loud and clear: "I want to make Barcelona be more unpredictable". I'm sure most would agree that in recent times Barcelona have been playing a predictable brand of football. Teams have come up with solid plans to nullify Barcelona in recent seasons. Mainly clogging up the midfield, undercommiting to wide decoys, 'intelligent' low-risk pressing etc. You don't even need a superteam to do most of this.

The not-so-keen on the eye style that Barcelona played last night has left many fans with a bitter taste, despite a 0-4 win away from home against a mid table team (Rayo finished 8th in La Liga last season). But Martino has made a point. You come to play against Barcelona like this next time, you'll be punished. Against a big opponent, I would agree that this is not the way to play. I may be wrong but I think that you might see the pros of this match later on in the season.

I think many of us have been overreacting. The results so far are good.
Let's wait for some real tests i.e. some top teams and then draw some conclussions

I like danyjr's post about the thing Tata has been able to do already.

Its interesting learning more about our fans. Some are idealistic and prefer to stick to our game style. But for me definitely results more importantly. Its not liek we are playing badly anyway, we playing brilliantly for most part.

About longballin

barcastuff 15h Montoya: "More long balls? We saw during warming up that the pitch was bad and we decided we should use the long ball more."

glad to see pedro getting some goals. If this was 12/13 season he woulda looked around to find messi and pass it off instead of shooting.

Let's remember that last season we beat Rayo 0-7, with several subs (I remember Thiago and Pedro played) and they had their two best players Piti and Baptistao.
So the result should not be used as a comparison but only how we played. And last season we played them off the pitch with our style and won them 0-7.

free_cat wrote:

alexjanosik wrote:Cesc once proves why he is the ultimate stat padder.Completely invisible throughout the game,yet gets assists and a goal.And people fall for it 
Second best player on our team and the best CAM in the world. 

Cesc wasn't invisible.  We didn't get the midfielders involved so how do you expect him to be very visible? Imo he had a solid game and added a goal and assist. Xavi was even more invisible than Cesc and could only add one assist. It's not xavi's fault, this kind of game doesn't suit him.

I want to say that I don't think this game was a one off. Except the Levante game, we have been playing like this (away from Cruyff tactics) all the other games,  but we didn't have a rival that could challenge the domination of the game anf posession. Not only they had more possession but they attacked as much as we did.

Now we know why Rossell signed Tata, to end the last remaining influence of Cruyff, Guardiola and Laporta in the club: our footballing style.

I won't ask for Tata to be sacked, I still hope he wants to find a midway style like Rijkaard did and results so far are good, but it's not what I like and not what has worked at barça historically.

Xavi wasnt more invisible than Cesc.He was probably our only player who tried to keep the ball and play patiently.Anyway hope you are right that he doesnt move away from our style.

free_cat wrote:Let's remember that last season we beat Rayo 0-7, with several subs (I remember Thiago and Pedro played) and they had their two best players Piti and Baptistao.
So the result should not be used as a comparison but only how we played. And last season we played them off the pitch with our style and won them 0-7.

Last season Barca won 0-5 Rayo. And this could actually been a lot more than 0-4, Neymar had 3 absolute scoring chance's, Pedro lob, Messi 1on1, and Tello could have had 2 assists for completely free Messi. With good luck this could have been like 0-10.

These excuses piss me off. Only thing which annoys me more than pitch excuses and pressing excuses is fans talking about results.

Since when did we become about results only?

If I was a 6 year old boy again (or however old I was), this is not the Barca I would choose to be a fan of.

I became a fan of this club firstly because of the style of football, if I saw what I saw yesterday I would of probably chosen one of the English clubs in full truth. I mean, I can watch hoofball all the time in England and even get to games easier.

Bad pitch and pressing? Im sorry, is this the first time we played on a bad pitch and the opponant pressed? Go away.

I remember the team of Guardiola playing in a pitch which was little better than a giant puddle and I would bet my life we played more passes on that day than yesturday.

I dont want to hear about results, we arent coached by Mourinho or are a team of some scrubs who result is all that matters. And even if it did, you really think this result was repeatable? They had almost as many chances as we did, on another day they would of scored 2 goals. If this was Valdes of last season, they defiantly would have.

Harmonica wrote:

free_cat wrote:Let's remember that last season we beat Rayo 0-7, with several subs (I remember Thiago and Pedro played) and they had their two best players Piti and Baptistao.
So the result should not be used as a comparison but only how we played. And last season we played them off the pitch with our style and won them 0-7.

Last season Barca won 0-5 Rayo. And this could actually been a lot more than 0-4, Neymar had 3 absolute scoring chance's, Pedro lob, Messi 1on1, and Tello could have had 2 assists for completely free Messi. With good luck this could have been like 0-10.

Sorry, it was two seasons ago that we destroyed them 0-7 and with our style. So there seems to be no need to park the bus and hoof versus Rayo yo destroy them at their stadium.

After reading many comments and having some time to think about it, Tata had no pre-season. He has to test new things with lower teams, and if this is just a test so we are ready when facing tougher oppositions, I am all for it. I just don't want this kind of play with teams like Rayo to become a norm. We can beat them comfortably with our standard possession game.

So, if this was a test to prepare the squad to for counter, or fast vertical long ball play when the good enemy is pressing high, it is a good thing. We get another weapon in our arsenal.

so long as we win, I am fine with some changes, granted I don't think this is how we will always play, like said above it is good to have a plan B when competing against teams that park the buss.
When Xavi retires, I can see we will struggle hard to maintain the possession game, we lost thiago as well we have no proper controller in the team of high quality, Tata is working with what he has Cesc is shining under the new strategies, so is Neymar, and apparently now Pedro as-well.
I wouldn't take this game too seriously though because we have to remember our team is probably very tired from internationals and champions league.