Rafa played a suspended player...

I disagree with you Bill.  Our talent is elite and we should be able to compete against the elite... we played Barca very tough last year although we lost.  Their team hasn't changed and neither has ours.  So i don't see how we suddenly looked like we didn't belong on the pitch with them unless the manager is that much worse.

The only significant change was Rafa.

And tactically, it was painfully (i mean really painfully) obvious how comically bad the team shape was.  Last year, our issues were never team shape.  They were:
-  Refusing to change the shape although Atleti had figured it out. The shape itself was good. But it wasn't effective against Atleti as Simeone neutralized us by packing the box in a PTB scheme and letting the wide areas completely unmarked.
-  Modric getting injured.  We went down the toilet in the midfield without him.  Would be the same this year if it happened.
- Bale was absolutely atrocious.

You disagree on the last item or the entire post?

Ancelotti vitually had no team at end of both seasons and whether it be Jese in one season or Modric in the other, he made no attempt to integrate any of the reserves to step up into the lineup. In today's game, a team cannot compete in 3 competitions with only 12 players and you need a complete squad to be able to overcome the inevitable injuries taht will happen.

This year to Rafa's credit, he has overcome that flaw of Carlo. i don't agree with your comment about the same dependency on Modric. Both Casemiro and Kovacic have shown they can step up when needed.

You are ignoring the fact that Suarez was not with Barca until January and the team that finished last season was much greater than the one we came close to.

i agree with your comments about tactics, line separation etc. Rafa is indeed responsible fot that and there is no doubt IMO that he will be gone at end of season. But he is not responsible for the Copa screwup.

I still say that no matter who would be in charge this year, we still end up with no trophies. You may think we have elite talents (and maybe we do), but there is no way we are as good or talented with our front three to MSN. We still may be able to recover enough to be in last 4 in CL, but we are definitely way inferior to not only Barca but Bayern as well.

imo even with a sporting director, it should be the coach who suggests the players he wants. the sporting director isn't the coach, he's not going to train with the players, and neither is he going to put out formations and team sheet strategies. a coach who chooses his own players has little to no excuse for failures. what i don't want is another mourinho-valdano situation. the coach should have authority over the sporting director with regards what player he feels is best for his team

as far as socios, nobody is calling them idiots, but i've been seeing a lot of 'florentino out' comments. my problem with this is the same problem i had when the carlo sack threads; when you say someone should leave, then think about who we are replacing them with. florentino has run three elections unopposed now- one during his first stint, the second one in 09, and the one two or three years back. when that happens, it tells me either people believe in him, or nobody has any realistic aspirations

as for rafa, he'll stay till seasons end and we will asses the situation in its entirety. but we are close to Christmas and we are out of the copa, 7 points behind the leaders in the league, and what looks like a terrible head2head situation (the 4 nil loss @ home), and we don't even know what our best formation is yet.

not the personnel but the formation, we have a deep squad that should be able to suit at least two different formations effectively but we do not know what works best for us (obviously injuries haven't helped), and we still have guys playing out of position. we need a miracle of epic proportions after the winter break

My idea is that club in general along with sporting director should define how we play. And its the manager,s role to execute it, sure he can have an opinion and diacuss playwrs with the sporting directors but he should keep the general idea intact.

Lets be honest barca has gotten it right and we should just rip of what they do. You dont even have to invent anything

It took Barca over 10 years to real the rewards of their philosophy... Basically the time it too for one generation of youth players and coaches to go through. It's impossible for any elite team to be that patient.

A better model is Bayern.

It took barca to unearth aa generation of grnius players to achieve what they did...

Look barca made a simple commitment to playing positional footy because you can easily overwhelm moat teams by positionning and movement. They control the ball, the space they keep on the attack and with minimal efforts at timea they win moat games. Most importantly, they have succeeded in not ahooting themselves in the foot by hiring managers who understand the principles and follow a guising line.

Thats the model, its pretty simple to me.obviously they have figured out the whole coaching and training of young players to feed their model as well.

Now what WE do is that ww jump between managers hopong for that one guy that will wheep out the win. When he flops we change to a guy with a completely different style. Hell we dont even think about that when we hore a coach. Its just about who has the biggest resume. Worst of all, different type of managers ask for different players and we end up with a confusing squad where the players we have to necessarily match the requirements of x or y system. It always falls short somewhere.

Look at that pos Blanc, he turned PSG into a pretty good team, yhey play positional football. Pep turned bayern into one such team. Adopt one model, and follow through.

This aint rocket science we keep trying to differentiate as if it matters. Screw that we need to go full rip off mode.

barcelona made that commitment because they had the personnel to carry it out. and the crux of that personnel included players from their youth team and a once in a lifetime player, its not like they planned it or went out to find a messi xavi and iniesta. even when they turned down mourinho for pep, it was more a distaste towards mourinho's style than a love for a then unknown coach in pep

even when they had ronaldinho, that was just something that worked out. nobody expected him to lead the way he did, considering his manager at psg at the time wasn't really fond of him. it wasn't some elaborate plan for world domination. the stars were just aligned perfect for them

as far as sporting director, what i don't want is when a sporting director signs players a,b, c and tells the coach "hey, now make us win". cos that's no different from what florentino does. i also don't want a situation where coach asks for player a and sporting director says no and goes for b (obviously if its a case where there's no money to sign a,  i can understand). my point is, manager asks for who he wants and president/sporting director goes for him

also, the manager has the authority over who we should sell, instead of us selling our good players just to raise money to sign someone else. we've had valdano and arrigo sacchi as sporting directors, and it seemed to me at times they couldn't separate being a sporting director from a coach (even though they never wanted to and would never have attempted to coach the teams). i don't mind a sporting director, but the coach should be allowed to manage

Agree with tito. The manager should be the one signing players, not the sporting director, not the president.

Enrique asked for Vidal and Arda and got them. So if it doesn't work out, he's got only himself to blame.

Klopp has full control at Liverpool.

Arsene, Pep and even that brainless LVG, they're the ones signing the players. And even when the club wants to sign somebody, the manager will have to greenlight the move.

So yeah, the manager should have full control. If he fails and gets sacked, at least everybody will know it was the right thing to do with him.

there is no such thing as a plan for world domination anyway. In footy, you need good players a), then you need a good organization. the organization is what they have and we dont. All i am saying is that their idea of football stays the same, across managers and it makes things very easy for them overtime.

As long as the coach isnt trying to change the whole way of playing and keep the principle intact, then it's safe to trust him.

Actually, Barca committed to this style organizationally when Cruyff was the manager and they stuck to it. For the youth system to truly feed you, that takes 10 years. But, as nick said, you can commit to hiring managers that all play that style and you can have success in the meantime.

Not sure why we don't adopt it since all the youth NTs in Spain are committed to it too. All it takes is hiring the right manager and paying attention to the technical skills of the players you buy.

my point is, there isn't a one-side fits all strategy. yes one needs better policies, but also a bit of luck. i'm not saying you both are wrong, i'm just saying, because it works for one team doesn't automatically mean it will work for others. we'll have to use things like our experiences and failures to dictate how we move forward (i know, that sounds very vague). but i don't think its a matter of changing just one thing and then voila we attain dominance....a lot of things need to be addressed, the youth system may be one of those things too

We can start by simply buying players for positions we need as opposed to the obsession of Flo to buy players based on marketing potential.

If we have a balanced squad, (i. e. 2 decent CBs, 2 that can fill in when need, same re laterals, 2 good CBs, at least one that can play the holding or defensive coverage, 2 decent backups and then 6 decent forwards / wingers / AMs) then a decent coach can play tactics based on players at his disposal.

You know, most teams operate the same way. They get a manager, they sign players, they stick together until it stops working, then they change. Some sticks to their manager longer, some sign better players. The difference between top and bottom is the quality of players. The difference between top and elite is how right with their choice of top players and management.

You are right, there is no perfect recipe. But i think it serves to pay attention to what barca do. Maybe its not a nice thing to read but the quest for differentiation has exhausted me. Us wanting to be that fast paved counter team bs sucks man, i am tired, it doesn't yield consistent results, in tropgies that is. Besides we went from mous counter to carlo trying to keep the ball to benitez being lost.

We made the wrong decisions in terms of personnel for how we want to play. To each his own in terms of play atyle, i will champion what i like and jiego de posicion is it.

Adopt one style, stick to it, sign players that fit your style, sign managers that know your style and just stay with it.

Today if RM wants to play possession at a high level we lack the personnel. Counter? Same thing. We are in this in between bullshit that carlo mastwred but benitez cant, or at least is struggling to.

True.. We are currently stuck between a possession oriented midfield ( the players we have are born to play this)
And a counter attacking front three. Pochettino is the favorite for next manager and I hope we complete the transition under him. Selling CR will be a step in right direction.

futbol_bill wrote:We can start by simply buying players for positions we need as opposed to the obsession of Flo to buy players based on marketing potential.

If we have a balanced squad, (i. e. 2 decent CBs, 2 that can fill in when need, same re laterals, 2 good CBs, at least one that can play the holding or defensive coverage, 2 decent backups and then 6 decent forwards / wingers / AMs) then a decent coach can play tactics based on players at his disposal.

agree with this. which was what we were doing 5 yrs ago, but when mourinho started acting up and being too 'self' oriented, florentino decided to go back to his ways, and take the other extreme of signing whoever he wants

I agree Nick, but you have to look To Perez to stop his marketing signing to begin any change. If they chose to have / buy 2 LW, then they have to be prepared to have one of them on the bench. If they have Ams, they need to play them as such. If you have 2 left footed players, you don't play one of them on right at the expense of a natural right foot. Similiarly don't have all your mids with the same profile. yOu begin the process by looking at what you have, what you want to keep, what are the needs and what are the surpluses. Go after the needs and sell the surpluses. aLso look more closely at the characters of the players, will they adapt to team needs or if they have a distorted view of entitlement (I'm referring here to Benz's ex agent saying some players like Benz have a mentality that they are immune to normal behavior).

we didn't play counter as an antithesis to barcelona, it just happened. pellegrini was more possession oriented, and mou brought in the counter attacking to get the best out of the team he had. now maybe we can say mou did that as an antithesis to barca's style, but mou has always been that way. so once again, it wasn't an elaborate scheme. even the bale signing, which kind of typifies what system we were going for wasn't solely about playing a counter attacking system (florentino doesn't think in such football ways)...the marketing aspect was also a part of that move