I think most of the subs need to come on at HT lol... Flick thought the kids are good enough to start, what a lesson for him, so naive...

Ferran is just like having 10 men as usual, I mean Kounde is trying to do stuff on the RW n hes no where trying to link up... all he does just make runs n try to get lucky to score goal, does nothing else... how these top coaches even give him playing time puzzles me lol...

Wow... no subs... so I guess this is the first sign we see of Flicks flaw... clearly... even top coaches are flawed, so strange, this is epic bad lol... I knew its all too good to be true, but I didnt expect this bad?

Why thank u Herrera?

Why isnt that a red then? Ref feeling sorry for the kid?

All the recent talk about Fati... but hes so far down the pecking order only gets 10 mins in such a dire game?

farfan wrote:Welcome back friend, we've been needing a Barça fan who actually talks football for a while now.

Thanks.

May be I jinxed Flick. I should go back to being my skeptical self.  

Flick's to blame for such heavy rotation in a tricky away fixture. Papa Gerard Martin and Dominguez just don't cut it at this level. But they are favored over Fort for some reason thatI dont undertstand. Ferran can't do the basics correctly. And as I had feared that high defense was punished today and it will potentially get worse against better teams. Can't wait to have all our starters back.

what the heck did you expect? Barca has a good team of starters but no bench strength. If you continue to play starters all the time, you either end up with injuries or burnout!

Hopefully we beat Atleti this time, getting sick of dropping points against them time after time.

Sorloth is a tool... wtf Atletico starting him nowadays lol... has 0 link up skills, 3v2 twice n he cant even do a simple pass to teammate XD

That was an incredibly boring first half. Derbies aren't what they used to be

The game being temporarily called off lol

Surely Vinicius provoked this innocent mob into doing this.

It was courtois out of all the people

Until that Lino's shot on goal, Atlético lacked any semblance of threat inside the opp box. To think they had such great 9s at one point. They went from the likes of Torres, Falcao, D.Costa to a low IQ Norwegian having no technical ability to speak of.

Ancelottis gameplan was class. Atletico barely made any advancements, sorloth and alvarez were quite poor. They got really lucky with the draw, as I feel 1-0 would have been a lot more fair. Rodrygo should be dropped from starting such important games tbh. I would like to see diaz and endrick more often

The sensation I got live was that we switched from 4222 to 4141 to 541, and on each switch we got worse, lost more structure, lost more momentum, lost more depth, and lost more control of the game. Bad game management, and would have liked to maybe see Camavinga come on for Modric near the end. Don't feel like we had to switch our scheme so much.

The other day Endrick looked like a badass because of the risk he took, it paid off, today he rightfully looked like a fucking idiot. I hope it was him that Valverde was chewing out near the end of the game.  

Best case scenario Tchouameni plays a functionally good enough "12th man" sub role for the CB/CDM position, I've never liked him, too much of a tree trunk of a player and ever since I first saw footage of him I was disappointed Madrid was still willing to go for a midfielder like him. He has to be right on point and the context has to be favorable for him in order for him to be functional, and even then his lack of mobility and agility really hampers him, hard for him to be an elite deep lying playmaker or an in between the lines double pivot partner. Technical and mindset deficiencies. Inconsistent.

Valverde and Camavinga are way more talented and should be the future of our center midfield. I've been saying that since the Tchouameni Monaco Youtube vids were hitting their record number of views.

I saw footage of Mario Martin, our CM youth product against Sevilla the other day, kid looks like he could be a good squad midfielder for us by next season, has the turning ability and nimbleness of prime Garrincha compared to Treetrunkmeni and a bulldogish intensity reminiscent to me of Carvajal. Tchouameni in comparison often looks nonchalant. Hope Martin progresses well. Fully expect for Tchouameni to keep starting for political/dressing room reasons.  

Obviously hope we win everything, but also hope this is Carlo's last season.

There's a certain anti-intellectualism to the coach and to how the club looks at its football identity and process on the pitch that still puts me off and makes it self shown in various ways, one being the fact that we would even go for someone like Tchouameni in the first place, another is that the team is probably not coached well enough.

Pathetico indeed as usual...sore losers n try to use the crowd, the ref, atmosphere etc to make up for their lack of quality, but credit to them to keep fighting towards the end...

This is Reals problem though now they cant control the game at all n ceded the momentum, although not easy under the circumstances. Both teams can accept the draw.

Carlo played not to lose... a draw with maybe a lucky win. Well draw it was. Very conservative tactics.

Pretty hard to assess anyone, good or bad, in the context of these tactics.

On the goal conceded, Valverde was overaggressive and then late to recover his defensive position. That left the midfielder on his side free to run with the ball and make a pass. Secondarily, Rudiger was a bit late pushing up so the offsides didn't work. Rudiger and Militao are not world class centerbacks. Good... but have limitations.

Game could have been won if Carlo had allowed the team to attack more. But not a bad result under the circumstances.

Interesting how things keep getting recontextualized as time goes on.

What was being hailed as arguably the best squad in the world by popular consensus earlier in the summer is now starting to show its holes.

1. Our right back situation has been flimsy for years and years. When healthy, Carvajal is world class but up until last year he had been pretty inconsistent health wise and we had had the mediocre old-Arbeloa, Danilo, and Lucas Vasquez as RB back up options. Always too dependent on Carvajal staying healthy and performing.

At more than 32 1/2 years old and with what could potentially be a career ending injury, now we are left naked down that flank. Left to improvise with LV, Militao, or Valverde as RB options. This had to happen for Madrid to finally pull the trigger on RB options next summer. Part of me is wishing Lucas Vasquez fails miserably as RB so that the club feels more pressure still to revolutionize the RB options.

2. At CB we are also exposed. Hope Rudiger can keep it going for several more years but he's 31 1/2 years old already, and other than him we only have a somewhat injury-wise delicate seeming Militao and Tchouameni as options. We're going to have to find 1-2 elite range CBs relatively soon.

3. Mendy is not at his best form and even when he is, he shouldn't necessarily be our starting LB. Fran Garcia is meh but we do have Miguel Gutierrez (who's even worse defensively than Fran according to some stats) and Alphonso Davies as potential signings in the back burner. We will see.

Our LB package could be improved on.  

4. Tchouameni is being very disappointing at midfield and at best I hope he can at least be functional in a Mascherano-like 12th man role as first back up option for CB and CDM. I was analyzing some of his stats and remembering some of the footage I saw with my own eyes from his Euros matches against the likes of Belgium, Netherlands, and Portugal... he looked a different player. At one point he was even beating Rodri and just narrowly behind Kroos in that tournament for his progression efficacy stats, which as I understand was based on the ratio of vertical/key passes that were successful. He was also leading France in terms of number of passes made and completed, pass percentage relative to volume, and successful defensive actions.

Ceballos and Modric should be leaving by the end of this season and with Tchouameni's lackluster performances at CDM and our need of him as a CB, I think we could benefit from 2 well rounded CM acquisitions.

5. With Rodrygo, Brahim, Arda, and Valverde (even though he should be played as an LCDM) we have some functional options in the right side of the attack as long as they and the team are well coached in a midfield centric scheme. The ideal would be to have a line breaking, penetrating, left footed goal/assist machine down that flank who on top of all that had very good, functional work ethic at the least.

An Angel Di Maria. That's what Valverde has kinda been in the past down that flank as a right midfielder.

With Rodrygo, Brahim, Arda, and Valverde playing right attacking midfielder/right midfielder roles who may overall drift more inwards than outwards and behind the defense, you need a Carvajal RB who can do so much...

We seem to be in the need next season if 2 RB's, an LB shakeup that relegates Mendy to the bench as the trusty defensive rock, 1-2 CBs, maybe 1-2 CMs, and ideally an elite new RW option that could be made possible with a possible sale of Rodrygo.

As for today's game, we played a 4222/4141ish sort of thing again and I thought it was disgusting how long it took for Carlo to field Arda.

I think the scheme is the way to go but it's just there's a probably a lack of proactivity, intensity, form, fitness, and a lack of more refined ball playing and pressing schemes that could make us look better. I still thought today we were somewhat dire even though we played my spiritually favorite formation of all time.

Valverde finally was given more liberty to play as a very fluid CM who often pulled of dictating moves from the LCDM zone. As I've been stating he should since at least twenty fucking seventeen.

Camavinga is a breath of fresh air but I am also disappointed at how it doesn't seem he's worked on how he profiles his body, this affects his turning ability, press resistance, and how he positions himself to pass, and one of the most trusted Spanish tacticos in Spain, read my mind and reiterated that word for word on Twitter today as I was making note that Camavinga really should probably start more from the right side of the pitch so that he has more angles and more of the pitch open for his left foot to distribute across the pitch.