in 2016
pedro and one of adama/deulofeu/sandro/munir will have to go


--neymar(deulofeu)--------suarez(munir)
and adama depth.

Scoreline is deceiving.Useless cross after useless cross after useless cross.Stone age tactics from Enrique.
The CM's are too busy staying back in position to advance play,which means that the sidebacks are advancing play as Cruyff says.
Better in the second half but still.Also in this sort of rigid tactical setup where the midfielders are not allowed freedom,Xavi is probably a better choice than Iniesta.
Playing in an unfamiliar position on the left of midfield,he was very good.Some wonderful skills and 2 pre assists.
This far back,Xavi can contribute more to the play than Iniesta.
Iniesta is better defensively but Xavi can contribute more to the play.

I don't see CMs staying back or not allowed freedom tbh.

Rakitic in the box to score a goal:



Xavi at the edge of the box pre-assisting:



Look where Xavi is again and Roberto darting into the box at the same time:



If at all we played too high and got countered a few times as a result where Mathieu had to clean up on his own.

What I'm seeing is that the CMs are definitely playing wider apart from each other and closer to the fullbacks and wide forwards. Instead of the Messi-Xavi-Iniesta triangle combining through the middle we now have Neymar-Alba-Iniesta and Suarez-Alves-Rakitic creating overloads on the respective flanks. No idea if this is good, no idea if this will win trophies. But I'm not going to try too hard to dissect why we're not playing an exact copy of 4 years ago. I've already accepted the fact that Xavi is soon 35 and Iniesta has also started to decline, the signs are there, so that 1-touch passing in a telephone booth stuff to unsettle a 10 man defensive block is in the past. We're CROSS nao against deep blocks. I'm dealing with it. So should everyone else.

Great game.....was annoyed with plenty of crosses till we got onto scoreline. but as someone said, today the crosses were limited once we were able to open them up. Moreover, few of the crosses today were quite dangerous. had a very good game from Xavi-Rakitic, felt this was the better mid combo than iniesta-rakitic. it was really sad to see iniesta on the bench though....
I wish Munir gets some goals to gain confidence. he seems superior ro sandro but the lad is lacking confidence....
I wonder with two stats....how many final balls Messi played today?? he looked completely like a no.10. And how many real goal opportunity the opponents had vs us. i cant remember bravo saving that many real goal chances in 6 games

A couple of gifs change nothing.I saw the game and have all our other games.
The CM's are playing deeper and they are restricted.No denying that.The fact that they dont cross zones once is testament to that.
And nowhere have I said that we should play like we did 4 years ago.But neither should we play hoof ball or turn into Crosselona.
We should play through our midfield and advance play from there instead of relying on fullbacks crossing to create chances.

If you don't trust gifs you can surely trust the recorded avg. positioning:



I don't know how much higher you want the CMs to be.

As I said, the CMs are clearly wider apart from each other and that's all there is to it. My interpretation is that now that every team in the world congests the middle against Barcelona and squeezes the lines the idea is to play around that instead of through it. It doesn't automatically mean Crosselona. That's a byproduct for me and individual decision of the players (mainly Alves , Adriano only had 4 crosses this game). You can have great wingplay without crosses. Like this:



In the 2nd half once Granada opened up there were only 5 crosses compared to 23 in the first. The main idea will be to combine on one side and quickly shift to the other. You could already see some glimpses of it (for example the sequence where Rakitic made that sombrero on the right side and then quickly shifted play to the left) but the players have cleary not mastered it yet. How about we wait a little more before declaring this "stone age tactics".

Donuts wrote:in 2016
pedro and one of adama/deulofeu/sandro/munir will have to go


--neymar(deulofeu)--------suarez(munir)
and adama depth.

I would say its very big assuming Deulofeu will make it with us. Im leaning towards the belief he wont.

Not really his fault mind you.

Adriano only had 4 crosses because he is a right footer playing leftback. Obviously he is incredibly two footed but his favourite is his right.

When Alba played last game, he did just as many crosses as Alves normally would.

Like I said I watch games to form opinions and then rely on stats,gifs.
Aint no way I trust the average positioning pic.No way Xavi and Rakitic were that close to the forwards,especially in the first half.
I would like to see how many passes Xavi and Rakitic exchanged with the forwards,if the positioning graph you showed is true,especially in the first half.
Things improved in the first half and the CM's did push up a bit so maybe thats why the graph is distorted.

Yeah lets blame Alves for Enrique's stone age tactics.

And stop posting gifs and pics.
Do you see the midfielders advancing play(second half notwithstanding)?
Do you see them combining with the forwards?(again second half notwithstanding)

alexjanosik wrote:Do you see the midfielders advancing play(second half notwithstanding)?

Yes.

alexjanosik wrote:Do you see them combining with the forwards?(again second half notwithstanding)

Yes.

Here is the full game in HD:



You can skip every few minutes. Xavi is always around the edge of the box in a very very advanced position close to Nerman and not "too deep" at all. But we're watching different games indeed as you seem genuinenly baffled by the avg. positioning graph.

And obviously let's not blame Alves for crossing the ball because that hasn't been a point of criticism for the past 2 seasons now since he lost his acceleration to make runs in behind regularly.

16:35 in the video. After recovering the ball we're building from the back all the way from Bravo. This is how it goes:

Bravo to Busquets.

Busquets advancing a few meters forward and then passing back to Mascherano.

Mascherano to Xavi who has come deep to collect the ball.

Xavi advancing forward and passing wide to Adriano.

Adriano back to Xavi.

Xavi to Rakitic sideways.

Rakitic long diagonal to Alves.

That's how we advanced the ball from Bravo all the way up. What's the problem now? Neither of the fullbacks have anything to do with advancing the ball. They are already way too high up the pitch (essentially they are the wingers in this system with wide forwards playing central) to do any "un-Cruyff-ish" buildup.

You are bringing up isolated incidents while I am talking about the whole match(more specifically the first half).
23 crosses in the first half and you are still arguing that we are advancing play through the midfield.
Maybe you and I have a different definition of advancing play.

but is it really because of our tactics though??
teams since three games ago stopped parking the buss wide and just stick everyone in the middle..
the amount of space alves/alba have gotten in those games is the most they've ever gotten, it's only natural for them to not pass it to the middle and just instinctively cross the ball as it's the only real option.