Madrid: Coentrao, Sahin, Callejon, Altintop and Varane

Barca: Sanchez, Cesc and Thiago (from their youth system)... did I miss anyone?

Short term, Barca has done much better. Most of our guys are project, even Coentrao since he's a mid and Sahin since he's been hurt. Hope we've improved internally enough to make up the gap.

with the right players, we can become a lockdown, we have the right players, we just have to make it work now.

Barca promoted Fontas aswell.

well it is yet to be shown how valuable any of these players will be for their respective teams but imo:

i think we filled our needs better than barca.. we needed a player like sahin in order to have a more attacking and versatile 4-3-3 we also needed more defensive players: coentrao varane and altintop -time will tell how useful they will be.

but there is no doubt that cesc thiago and sanchez are of higher quality and more proven.

sportsczy wrote:Madrid: Coentrao, Sahin, Callejon, Altintop and Varane

Barca: Sanchez, Cesc and Thiago (from their youth system)... did I miss anyone?

Short term, Barca has done much better. Most of our guys are project, even Coentrao since he's a mid and Sahin since he's been hurt. Hope we've improved internally enough to make up the gap.

Yes you missed 2. Fontas from their youth system. He a CB, but IMO not as good a signing as Varane. and Kiko Femenia from Hercules, he's with U20 selecciones right now. He will be bench strenth at both MF and wing.

I agree with you. Sahin and Varane do have the potential of being starters, but not necessarily from day 1. Callejon and Altintop are reserves and Coentrao is the jack of all trades super sub.

Whereas, Sanchez and Cesc are immediate starters, pushing existing starters to bench strength (Villa or Pedro and Abidal (if Barca goes with the 4 man MF)). Thiago has impressive form and will be a strong reserve, whereas the other 2 are improvements in reserves over last year.

So all in all, even tho we look to be better than last year, Barca has improved more than us. We are at least equal to them in attackers, defense and goal, but we definitely are behind in the midfield.

We're going to have to be close to perfect this year to stay with Barca. Cannot have games off at all. They're a very well oiled machine and, other than Sanchez, all their new players are bred in their system... little or no transition needed.

We're looking to be a well oiled machine too. But we really need everyone healthy and motivated. We should be better than last year just by the fact that we should be much more cohesive. Will that be enough? Next two games are some indication. The first La Liga classico will be the true test though.

Callejon > Sanchez calling it now xD

Zealous wrote:Callejon > Sanchez calling it now xD

Hate to disagree with you... but Sanchez has Aguero skills honestly. He was insane looking against France, and he was out of shape (only 2 days of training). I was stunned.

meh, fabregas will be injured like 3/4 of the season, sanchez will never see the field etc etc

what barca have done is revert back to their early 2000 style of buying players for a lot and expect them to do the job when in fact they are just a bunch of liabilities to the current line-up

halamadrid2 wrote:meh, fabregas will be injured like 3/4 of the season, sanchez will never see the field etc etc

what barca have done is revert back to their early 2000 style of buying players for a lot and expect them to do the job when in fact they are just a bunch of liabilities to the current line-up

I would suggest there is quite a bit of bias in your analysis. All signees are from club with the exception of Sanchez.
Also note that we have more signees than they.

What liabilities do they have other than Puyol's advancing age? No matter where you look there is a WC starter and a WC reserve. Mind you we are almost the same, but it's their midfield where they have a definite advantage. Let's just hope that 1. Sahin gets healthy soon and helps lift our midfield a notch or two; 2. Coentrao begins to understand the midfield role (giving us 5 WC MF) and 3. We get the jump on them (not being as firt as us as a team) for this summer trophy.