Barca could depend on a prime Messi with a secondary scorer to get him through... and sometimes 3.  Not to mention Xavi and Iniesta.  It was David Villa, Pedro, Alexis Sanchez, Neymar, Suarez, etc.  Now, there's nobody since Suarez is basically the same as Benzema this season.  It's all on Messi.  There isn't even a dominant midfield with Xavi and Iniesta... they're both gone.

It's been a superhuman effort by messi so far.  That won't last.  He'll hit a wall for a couple of months because that's just football.  When he does hit that wall, nobody is there in this team to pick up the slack.  And they have absolutely no depth.

You can quote me...  Barca will lose at least 4 more games in La Liga and get 4 more draws.  In the final 25 games, they will win 17, lose 4 and draw 4 AT BEST.  That's 20 points left on the table.  We just need to win 20, lose 2 and draw 3 to end the season.  Totally doable.  We're winning both classicos... or 1 win and a draw...  so we'll hold the tiebreaker.

90-95 points will win La Liga.  We won it with 93 points last season.  Barca won it with 91 the year before.  Barca won it with 94 the year before that.  Atleti won it with 90 before that.

Pretty clear what the point target needs to be for us.  I don't see Barca being better than what they leage winner has been for the past 5 years.

Instead of focusing on anyone else... we just need to focus on getting our point total as close to 95 points as possible. Football will take care of the rest like every season.

And keep in mind we've only gotten 2 league goals from CR... that's right... 2.  Does anyone really thing that's going to keep up?

Benzema only has 2 league goals too, which is crap even with my shit expectations coming in. I expected at least 3 from him by now.

Honestly, it's darn near a miracle we have as many points as we do when our supposed top 2 WC scorers have 4 goals combined lol.

Our midfielders have become our main goalscorers and fans still find a way to complain that they dont add as much as expected offensively

If we can win the clasico we could add some pressure onto Barca. They are due to have their purple patch we just need to get our shit together to be there to take advantage

Kova is back so we can start rotating properly in the middle. And for the love of God just buy Icardi, just swallow your pride, we need a goalscorer and Benz is not it. Last seasonn Ronaldo didn't get going until February. Looks like it'll be the same this season

we Have llorente and ceballos but we can only rotate with kovacic...great stuff

Ceballos and Llorente are the Kovacic of the last two years. ZZ is ostrasizing them for no reason, he wont include them in regular rotations this season from the looks of it. The Copa seems to be where we'll see them so hopefully we go far

I don't know how you can say that when Modric has 1 goal (APOEL), Kroos has 1 goal... and Casemiro has 3. Our DM is the best scoring threat out of the midfield. They've hardly carried anything.

The goals are coming from Isco (4), Asensio (4), Ronaldo (2), Benzema (2), Bale (2).... Ceballos had his one game with a double. And of course, Casemiro.

That's the extent of it. Pathetic. Bale has as many goals as Ronaldo and Benzema

Isco and Asensio are AMs, the M stands for midfielders.

All totals, midfielders have 15 goals and the forwards 6!

I didn't criticize a position.  I was criticizing the lack of offensive support from our CMs (not AMs)... and specifically Kroos and Modric.  It wasn't really a crticism of them individually either...  you just need a central midfielder who can dive into the attacking zone and actually create a play, whether it be a goal or assist, so that the defense can't just ignore them (more importantly, the geography they occupy; defense needs to pay a price for sending a second defender).

Isco and Asensio essentially play in Bale's position, which is wide left or wide right.  They don't play through the middle.  They don't bring a threat from the middle of the pitch.

Yeah, kinda obvious Hala including the attacking mids in that goal tally. Also, unless Ceballos and Llorente are doing fk all in training (to which I doubt) really concerned over Zidane's Carlo-esque ostracizing of both.

sportsczy wrote:I don't know how you can say that when Modric has 1 goal (APOEL), Kroos has 1 goal... and Casemiro has 3. Our DM is the best scoring threat out of the midfield. They've hardly carried anything.

The goals are coming from Isco (4), Asensio (4), Ronaldo (2), Benzema (2), Bale (2).... Ceballos had his one game with a double. And of course, Casemiro.

That's the extent of it. Pathetic. Bale has as many goals as Ronaldo and Benzema

Isco is part of the midfield and Ceballos has 2 goals. So that's 11 goals from the midfielders and 10 goals from the attackers. Give me a team whose midfield has had bigger output offensively than ours. I'll be waiting

Come on man.  Isco plays left or right... never through the middle.  Same with Asensio.  They cover the same territory as Bale does but attack it differently because their skillset if different obviously. They defend back to help the fullbacks too. They always play around the sidelines.

You never ever see Isco or Asensio attack the box down the middle... or very rarely.

Wtf are you guys talking about lol.

Zidane: I want to see Bale, Ronaldo and Benzema play together. [Marca]

Me:

Spoiler:

Well I mean he has to try and motivate Bale somehow. They can try it in CDR. No problem.

How much more motivation do they need? Are they such fragile beings? And clearly this sort of motivation ain't actually working.

Bale's agent

Other players get more support who aren't very good (from supporters not higher ups)

Dying to know who he's on about. Isco is 10x the player, Asensio is up and coming who turns up against Barca. KMC are understandable. Lucas is cantera and never gets his name chanted. Who could he mean??

who was his agent talking about? btw what support has bale not gotten? lol he's injured, he wants us to put him in the line up even when he's injured? we tried that once and we saw what happened

i think he is speaking of Asensio

asensio? lmao. we don't even know how much minutes he (or isco for that matter) will get when (if) bale and cristiano and benzema are all available. i get that he wants to support his client, but what does he expect tabloids to write when a player is always injured? bale's ability to support his teammates in spirit? i think he's smarter than that and just doing this to ensure the club hasn't forgotten about bale....that's the only "sense" i can get from this.

I don't respect Bale as an employee. Same as I don't respect Kaka after the whole lying about injury fiasco. No place for people like that in a professionally run organisation.

sportsczy wrote:Come on man.  Isco plays left or right... never through the middle.  Same with Asensio.  They cover the same territory as Bale does but attack it differently because their skillset if different obviously. They defend back to help the fullbacks too. They always play around the sidelines.

You never ever see Isco or Asensio attack the box down the middle... or very rarely.

Wtf are you guys talking about lol.

What???!!! Isco has always been a midfielder. if you see him left/right that jusr shows the free role ZZ has given him. You're probably the only one that sees him as an attacker. Even his teammates see him as part of the midfield.

Kroos: I prefer to play with 4 midfielders than 3 attackers. Guess who the fourth midfielder is, he is referring to. Lolz at comparing Bale's role to Isco's

It's 2 points guys, you really think we can't recover a 2 point difference ?

Valkyrja wrote:It's 2 points guys, you really think we can't recover a 2 point difference ?

You're assuming we get 6 points from El Clasico this year? When was the last time that happened?

I looked it up, last time we got all 6 points from El Clasico was the 2007-08 season, and before that was the 1983-84 season.

So, yeah, let's not assume we can do that this season. At least, let's not bet on it.

vanDEEZ wrote:I looked it up, last time we got all 6 points from El Clasico was the 2007-08 season, and before that was the 1983-84 season.

So, yeah, let's not assume we can do that this season. At least, let's not bet on it.

probably, but still that doesn't mean shat. we have a much better team than them this year and we should easily win both clasicos.

We have exactly the same team as last season, Barca have strengthened their defence. We couldn't beat Barca when we played our best football last season. Let's not kid ourselves.

They had Neymar and an in form Suarez... let's not kid ourselves is exactly right.