Ernesto Valverde

The Demon of Carthage wrote:

With that I mean, any half-decent coach would've given him a proper fight with the squad Madrid has and he certainly wouldn't be trailing him by 19 points.

Just one question. Is it possible for a coach to win back to back UCLs if he is not even half-decent?

The Demon of Carthage wrote:I'm definitely not taking anything away from him. He surely has done enough to justify Barcelona's decision to appoint him. However, I do think Madrid has given him a helping hand to "rise above" everybody else in La Liga.

With that I mean, any half-decent coach would've given him a proper fight with the squad Madrid has and he certainly wouldn't be trailing him by 19 points.

Valverde has done well, but his achievement wouldn't look this impressive if Madrid was breathing down his neck, 1 or 2 points shy of catching him.

Barcelona is the deserving La Liga leader, but their lead has a lot to do with Madrid sucking than them being good.

In my opinion, Valverde's Barcelona true worth will be tested in the CL against PSG or City because I don't think leading this dreadful Madrid side by 19 points is anything out of the ordinary.

Makes no sense. If you had your last season's point tally you would still be trailing by 8 points. You would be trailing behind this Barca even in your record-breaking 11/12 season at this point of the season.

And the 2 times we drew the ref disallowed our legit goals so we could easily be even further ahead.

I can see where the skepticism comes from.

We beat Juve in the group stages, but haven't faced a GL-defined difficult team since.

As with all managers, the crunch time really defines them. So majority of the folks here are going to judge him based on CL performances.

That said, I am more than happy with the way he has managed this side and to me even if we only win the league, it's a successful season.

So whats gonna be our best line up once everyone is healthy?

I see sometimes he rolls out something like this (with Paulinho instead of Coutinho)...

-------TerStegen
Sergi-Pique-Umtiti-Alba
---------Busq
---Rakitic---Iniesta
-------Coutinho
---Messi----Suarez

and sometimes this..

--------TerStegen
-Sergi--Pique--Umtiti--Alba
Rakitic-Busq-Paulino-Iniesta
----------Messi
---------Suarez

But trying to add Coutinho and Dembele to any one of those line ups can be tricky. Plus Valverede has a love for Paulinho because he runs all over the place like Rakitic and does dirty work and gets the odd goal.

Is it just me or is Valverde more of a reactive coach? I mean maybe we do not have a team to push our way anymore and we need to adapt, but he seams usually to get the best of our team in second half. I do not mean this as a bad thing, but it can be dangerous if facing a very good team in attack who can score 2-4 goals in first half and then sit back.

Is this the most defensively solid Barcelona team that we have seen in this century so far?

While watching the UCL second leg against Chelsea for the first time I felt that I was seeing a Barcelona that is not scarily vulnerable to counter attacks from high quality opposition. Now I must make it clear that this is not even close to being the best Barca team. Pep's Barca team is arguably the greatest team (not just Barca team) of all time. Some could even complain that Valverde has compromised with the natural ethos of Barcelona. However given what he has at his disposal the fair assessment would probably be that he has done a great job so far.

Take Unai Emery as a comparison. With a stronger squad at his disposal and not even at a club as historically rich in football tradition as ours (which means he probably gets more freedom to mould things in his own way) he has been an almost complete failure. I probably underrated both Emery and Valverde, the latter even more so, but now he seems to be on a completely different plane from the former.

Naturally the question comes should we change manager? I never thought it would come this quickly, but this game really was failure by epic proportions.

Overall I think hes done a decent job, but Im not sure if hes the right man to lead us if he can actually improve the team further which we obviously need...

If not, then who should be our next manager u think?

I wonder what futbol has to say. He is not a big team coach. Playing defensive at 2-0.

alexjanosik wrote:I wonder what futbol has to say. He is not a big team coach. Playing defensive at 2-0.

Why do you think I am a big Valverde fan? You are mistaking me for free_cat who was spouting this "he succeeded everywhere he went" bullshit.

Oh, yeah, and Cruyff was apparently a fan, too.

free_cat wrote:Cruyff on Valverde, when Valverde was Espanyol's coach:

"Siempre hay que ver las cosas en su medida. Su trabajo es más que excelente. Si ves jugar al Espanyol da gusto verlo. Me alegro mucho que haya gente como él o como Rijkaard que a parte de intentar jugar dejen disfrutar a la gente, porque el fútbol es para esto"

BarrileteCosmico wrote:

free_cat wrote:Cruyff on Valverde, when Valverde was Espanyol's coach:

"Siempre hay que ver las cosas en su medida. Su trabajo es más que excelente. Si ves jugar al Espanyol da gusto verlo. Me alegro mucho que haya gente como él o como Rijkaard que a parte de intentar jugar dejen disfrutar a la gente, porque el fútbol es para esto"

Lazy Free...

Cruyff: "You always have to judge things in their context.  [Valverde's] work is more than excellent. It gives pleasure to watch Espanyol play. I'm very happy that there are people like him or Rijkaard that on top of trying to play they let the people enjoy, because this is what football is for."

futbol wrote:

alexjanosik wrote:I wonder what futbol has to say. He is not a big team coach. Playing defensive at 2-0.

Why do you think I am a big Valverde fan? You are mistaking me for free_cat who was spouting this "he succeeded everywhere he went" bullshit.

I thought I remembered you defending Valverde. Apologies if that was someone else. Anyway, he is a small team coach. And Cruyff would have been mortified if he saw recent performances. His past quotes have no relevance in this discussion.

How bad was the game. Barcelona defending at 2-0 , my god.

How bad was it? We basically created zero actual goalscoring chances and defended with every man until it was 0-3 because our midfield cannot string 3 passes together between themselves in one play

How can you defend Valverde after that? He already was lucky against Chelsea thanks to Courtois putting a stinker performance on the night.

Last night was just something that had to happen, it just came earlier than we expected. With the way Valverde had us play throughout the season, it could have been predicted beforehand.

After every game I said it! We are playing absolute shit for most of the season, results and point difference in the leauge are really deceiving in this case.

At least with Pep when we were elminiated/defeated I knew that if I tune in next week I'll see a great game of football

Now I know that when I tune in next week I'll see the same exact pile of shit


Next season we should get a new charismatic manager, put Griezmann up front if we (hopefully) sign him, create a new formidable midfield and start over.

I am in favor of sacking Valverde for two reasons. I was not happy with this appointment right at the onset but results made me accept him to some extent. One is his style of play is against our ethos. The second is he has shown he cannot handle the biggest of games. In the latter respect he is like Unai Emery but Emery perhaps has more style to his game. He may have made the team more defensively solid at times but at Barca that quality can be appreciated at best in combination with other virtues which are pretty much non-existent at the moment. The problem is that with a La Liga and possibly a cup win the chances of giving him one more year at the helm will be high. Besides having wasted so much money recently I doubt we can afford to spend enough this summer to really shape a top class team, especially in the midfield.

alexjanosik wrote:

futbol wrote:

alexjanosik wrote:I wonder what futbol has to say. He is not a big team coach. Playing defensive at 2-0.

Why do you think I am a big Valverde fan? You are mistaking me for free_cat who was spouting this "he succeeded everywhere he went" bullshit.

I thought I remembered you defending Valverde. Apologies if that was someone else. Anyway, he is a small team coach. And Cruyff would have been mortified if he saw recent performances. His past quotes have no relevance in this discussion.

Nah, was not me. I mean I didn't bash him because you can't bash an unbeaten coach too much, especially with the situation he found himself in (lost Neymar and no signings until winter) but I called this Barca the most boring and uninspring many times before.

From bottling a 4-1 lead, to Roma of all teams, there is no way back. He needs to deliver the domestic double and then be decent enough to step down.

Unfortunately I don't see us doing much in the CL in the future. If Griezmann comes next season, with a more positive coach, Coutinho, Dembélé, Griezmann, Messi, Rakitic, Busquets is a decent enough team but still too lightweight for the CL. To resemble any sort of positional play and not be a defensive liability Messi would have to go back to false 9, Griezmann out wide à la David Villa with Dembéle on the other flank. Then Coutinho, Busquets, Rakitic in the middle. Coutinho is young but not that great defensively so we'll get done anyway if we come up against De Rossi, Strootman, Nainggolan, Kolarov level physicality.

Just hope Madrid don't win it thrice, get the league and Cup then it's still a decent season, especially if Liverpool manage to win the CL (pipe dream).

Yeah. I dont think that lineup will work either. If it was upto me, I would realize that we cant win the CL with Messi. I would sell Messi to City while Pep still thinks Messi is a CL cheat code(guy thinks Barca are CL favorites with Messi).
Get De Bruyne and 100-150 mil in return. Hijack Madrid's move for Salah. Would instantly be a force in the CL. Can play our way, pressing would be back and much more variety in the attacking phase.

On the subject of physicality, our defense got manhandled by Dzeko. Pique is not consistent but the man has stepped up time and again in big games. Over the years, he has been our saviour against physical teams in defense. Yesterday, he got ruined by Dzeko. I can only remember Drogba manhandling him like that.

Can't believe you would gladly sell Messi just because the coach is incompetent and cannot organize the play around him.

Go back and watch some 11/12 games and see how we could play with Messi roaming around. The difference is back then things were happening around him, now it's static and there's no movement.

Even though we lost out on CL and La Liga in 11/12, I absolutely loved the way we played, especially looking back all these years later. At least we went out with pride and undeservingly. Now, we're being completely outplayed

Myesyats wrote:Can't believe you would gladly sell Messi just because the coach is incompetent and cannot organize the play around him.

Go back and watch some 11/12 games and see how we could play with Messi roaming around. The difference is back then things were happening around him, now it's static and there's no movement.

Even though we lost out on CL and La Liga in 11/12, I absolutely loved the way we played, especially looking back all these years later. At least we went out with pride and undeservingly. Now, we're being completely outplayed

That was 2011/12. This is 2018. He still moved back then. Now he doesnt.

My reasons for wanting him gone are two fold. The first reason is that we cant play the Cruyff way with Messi. Positional play requires movement off the ball to find pockets of space, create triangle passing lanes etc. Messi is unwilling to do that. He is extremely static off the ball. He never moves to offer good passing options(on the counter, static possession etc). And contrary to popular opinion, he is not some midfield maestro who runs our play. He has one predictable move. Drop deep. Get the ball. Play the diagonal to left back and expect cut back.

Where was he yesterday when we were struggling in midfield? Nowhere. He could have dropped deep, helped out in keeping possession in midfield. Now you might say that we needed bodies upfront to attack and for counters. But fact is he is useless on counters. How many times did he offer runs in behind? How many times have we seen us break on counters only to find Messi casually staying back expecting the cut back ball. So he is not helping in midfield, not good on counters and wont press. We have not pressed well in ages because Messi refuses to put the work in. Garbage teams press a zillion times better than us while we let teams casually play it out from the back. Look how well Roma pressed yesterday and contrast it to how easily we allowed them to play it out from the back (because Messi wont press).

So we cant play the Cruyff way with Messi. Even assuming that I put my reservations aside about style of play, we still wont accomplish much in CL with Messi. The proof is in the way we have been destroyed in the last 3 years. And yes, he deserves a lot of the blame because the team is constrained by him. So he has to produce the goods. One dimensional play from him isnt going to cut it.

With the change I suggested, we instantly become much much better. We go back to playing the Cruyff way and we can get results in the CL knockouts.
De Bruyne is a world class midfielder. Him and Countinho would add creativity, passing, flair to our midfield. De Bruyne also has a terrific engine so he will help in defense too. Salah, Dembele, Suarez/Griez is a class frontline which offers goals, pace, creativity and pressing. All in all, a much better team.

To summarize my long winded post. With Messi gone, we can go back to playing our way and get results in Europe.

Forgot to mention a much more reasonable wage structure with Messi gone.

Interesting looking at Kolarov, let go by Pep but still has it at Roma, class player, probably just not suited to the way Pep plays requiring younger guy able to get up and down the field all game.

On the long term view, I have always thought our cycle was long gone, but we have managed to prolong it much longer than I thought, even after Neymar left we should win the double, so thats good. But its a shame with Messi around we arent able to win more CL which we probably should... liability defensively or not, hes still the best player no matter how you argue or put it...

Blaming Messi is ridiculous. How about the fact we didn’t bring in another scorer to help Suarez and Messi once Neymar left? Instead they drop big on Dembele who’s main strength isn’t scoring, and they spend big for a cup tied Coutinho. So if teams (like Roma) managed to push Messi out the box and make him a creator as oppose to a finisher, then what happens when Suarez is in garbage form? Who’s scoring? I pointed this out earlier in the season when Paulinho was scoring random garbage goals. Or what anout Valverde who didn’t seem to have any sense of urgency, hardly did any subs until late on and he for whatever reason used the same lineup that didn’t work in the first leg. We have played so meh all season, and that’s not somehow on Messi. That’s all on the board

alexjanosik wrote:To summarize my long winded post. With Messi gone, we can go back to playing our way and get results in Europe.

Bunch of gibberish

Messi is the only thing keeping us at the top right now while the entire team is clearly mismanaged and there's also the fact that we've been unable to make the right transfer moves in order to strenghten the squad properly.

There's so many things that Valverde keeps doing wrong, for instance: keeps playing Gomes when he clearly doesn't have anything to offer, uses Paulinho as a deep lying playmaker whilst he clearly has no playmaking skills and is only useful behind the striker / making runs into the box.

I could go on and on. He has absolutely no clue what he's doing, there's no movement on the pitch, no 1-2 touch play, nothing at all.

But yes, Messi is the problem and we should sell his ass, eh?

Without Messi we wouldn’t of got as far as we did in the UCL, nor would we still be fighting for 2 titles. Suarez scored one goal in total in the UCL...own goals were the the 2dn highest goal scorer for us besides Messi. That’s ridiculous

Valverde used Sergi in that stupid 4-4-2 midfield when it was clear in the first leg he and Semedo didn’t click well. Also Sergi in the midfield made no sense with Kolaravs slow ass ahead of him. If we had Dembele on with Semedo, it would of forced Kolarav to stay back as oppose to push forward to attack because of their speed. Something Sergi doesn’t offer

Agree. Valverde thinks that more midfielders on the pitch equals more control so he puts out his shitty 4-4-2 but it doesn't seem like the players know what to do once the game starts.

Roberto isn't even that bad a player but even though there were 4 midfielders on the pitch against Roma, there was nobody to pass to. It's either a back pass or a turnover, there's no triangles and no connection between the players and definitely no penetration in between the lines.

This has been the case all season long basically. We're very lucky to be so much ahead in the leauge.