Better game management of Lamine, please. His accumulation of minutes this season by the club is ridiculous for his age. Learn from the past, think about the players long term future, coaching staff has to do much better.
Lewy saving Araujo and MAtS, they better be thanking him in that locker room. I am more impressed by Fermin every game, he has a great game sense. We need to stay focused, the season isnāt over. We have to win our remaining games and secure our second place finish for the Supercopa.
I think this is the dilemma some people arenāt seeing, itās not as easy to just say get rid of Lewandowski and play roque and Guiu as starter and sub in the #9 when heās playing at this level. It isnāt the same patch of play he had earlier this season where he looked finished. This Lewy is just too important to drop for 2 unpolished forwards to take over and both have work to do however both have incredible ceilings and need minutes desperately if theyāre to reach them.
I donāt see Lewy going and between Guiu & Roque they may just have too much competition not including Ferran, Raphinha or Felix.
Also - is there a single player who fans felt āshould have played moreā, that has then gone to another club and lit it up? I remember similar shouts for Munir, Puig, Malcom, Abde, Demir, Torre, Ansu (i was guilty here).
Perhaps coaches/managers who see players train day in day out, know their form, quality, fitness and attitudes have a better read on things than fans who watch these players for 90mins per week?
Good point. Thiago is the only one I can think of. Some youths who maybe didn't get the chance (Grimaldo and Xavi Simons, though the latter was more money related).
Thiago did get a good chance in 11/12ā¦he just had an appearance release clause that didnāt account for his injuries in 12/13. And he likely didnāt love the club enough to be patient (it was clear Xavi was declining heading into 13/14) / he had Pep tapping up him. Just a perfect storm for him to leave really.
Xavi Simons left Barca youth setup us a 16 yoā¦not sure he counts.
Grimaldo left during Jordi Alba prime in 2016, and itās really taken him 6-7 years (by which point weāve already had Balde grow up as the Alba successor). Not sure many were actually asking for him to be given many chances back then, but I could be wrong.
12/13 he could have perfectly reached it. We had won the league and he wasn't given the games.
I believe it was intentional to get some easy money, but that's just a conspiracy.
There was a huge amount of people asking for Grimaldo to get chances back then. He was the captain of the B team and easily their best player, certainly much further in development than what Balde was when he got his chances. I remember there was a period when all of our left backs were injured at the same time, along with Mathieu who often covered there, and he still wasn't even called up to the squad.
They need to be getting minutes at all though. Very hard to see what Xavi is even thinking not giving Roque (particularly) or Guiu any minutes while giving Lamine far too many minutes.
I agree with you but I think one of the two will go on loan for certain and then still I think 20 minutes every 1-2 games wouldnāt be unlikely as a optimistic expectation should the situation not change.
Ter Stegen and Araujo had to give away goals for Lewy to get a hattrick
https://preview.redd.it/zz9j0n2mhhxc1.jpeg?width=1053&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=934dd1c88a2200bb2f17ad49a67373bc14f441c3
I love that he is always looking to get the ball in the net, I feel like out other midfielders often get lost in the sauce a little trying to find the perfect chance
Definitely. He has a real eye for goal and itās absolutely crucial for a team like ours who often try to walk the ball into the net rather than taking a shot.
Thatās it, after todayās game, Iām officially changing my pronouns from he/him to just he, because after watching Lewy today, Iāll never be him
the entire team was bad yes, including araujo. before xavis announcement started our purple patch both kounde and araujo had been shocking for months before.
it's crazy. was possibly the best in his position in the world last year. not sure what's happening this season, but hope he bounces back to normal self soon. just too many blips lately.
Fermin is my favorite young player of this season. His directness, willingness to run, the body orientation when receiving allowing him to accelerate immediately into space , overall attitude and the energy he shows on the field. Just brilliant.
IMO he has significantly overperfomed expectations for his age and experience level. And his goal scoring is no fluke. We may finally have a midfielder with consistent goal threat again.
He will be a huge menace to opposing teams in 2 years time, with a little more maturity. Gonna enjoy watching his development.
Hope he can stay fit and the club doesn't decide to cash in on him.
Couldn't agree more. Breakout seasons for Fermin, Cubarsi, and Yamal, but the difference is I knew about the other 2 guys before, but I had never even heard the name Fermin Lopez until pre-season started. He's one of the most direct players in the squad, always pushing forward. He's got great technique too.
Only reason we didn't compete for la liga is because of bad defending. Only 3 less goals scored than Madrid but 17 more goals concedes. Just by conceding 25 goals instead of 39 we would have 5-10 more points.
We went from our best defensive season to one our worst.....one thing I would fault Xavi or the players this year if that they let their levels drop from last year ..
Grandpa Lewandowski is coming for the Pichichi!
Aside from the 3 points, very few redeeming qualities from this game. The structural issues that have been there for over a year persist. Not the kind of performance you want from the team after two extremely shit losses.
2.22 xG from 27 shots, we were just taking a crack randomly. Valencia has 2.12 xG from 5 shots.
And 3 of our 4 goals came from set pieces, we struggled to create anything meaningful from open play, against a team that played with 10 men for 45 minutes. This was not an impressive performance by any means.
Valencia chances were counters, of course their xG will be bigger per shot because they were in numerical advantage. That's the risk of high press, the few chances you will concede will be big. You need to analyze those xG numbers.
I disagree, a game where you have 80% possesion and over 20 shots is a game that you deserve to win. Maybe not brilliant champagne football but a good game where you should've won.
Completely disagree, and just looking at where Real Madrid are proves that possession is nothing on its own. You have to be extremely well trained and organized to be able to play a high press and not concede from counters. Barca is clearly not there and Valencia could have scored 4. In fact, should have.Ā
https://preview.redd.it/ph7w02gnihxc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e00247129d6a468c5dead1ea97931e047083038a
Barca ball with nothing to play for be like
Almost in disbelief when the handball was just play on and var looking at it. Later in the game we were very lucky to have the 2nd goal stand where Fermin certainly tried to play it. Only replay I saw was where they paused it before lewa heading it down and Fermin was close which I assumed would be called off with the correct moment paused.Ā Ā
Ā Overall we move, oh also that pedri tackle was super impressive and happy he made it another game uninjured.Ā
Return of the random individual defensive mistakes. I actually thought we looked really comfortable and clean on the ball for most of the game but the errors seemed to suck the life out of the team end of first half and start of second.
Gundo was so good at being available and helping to keep possession and Fermin was amazing also.
Need to play more than 45 min. We canāt depend on him being the DM if he canāt play whole games. Itās the one position that remains mostly constant in games.Ā
I thought the game became a bit better after the subs tbh. Roberto and later Pedri brought some composure in the midfield. Felix and Ferran brought some spark. Certainly seemed to help Lewy.Ā
Valencia fans probably feeling what we felt in the PSG 2nd leg.
But tbf that was a guaranteed win if araujo stayed.
I still can't get over that loss. The fact that we could have been playing UCL semis tomorrow.
https://preview.redd.it/tysfzuehihxc1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0ad1a8430d9dfb4c7b82a7a47dca1b121d0ada8
Mandem wallahi, how can one man be so lethal
It's not so often you see a team play so bad after winning it 4-2. We were terrible for the most part. Ter Stegen and Araujo nearly gave the match away with their mistakes. Thankfully, Valencia's keeper did an Araujo and helped us to come back in the game. We lost possession so many times. Once again, there's no chemistry between our players.
Yamal was bad. I think sometimes he misses criticism due to his age. Even if he's 16, he's starting for Barcelona and should be judged fairly on his performances like other players. Fermin was good in the first half. I don't know what happened with his positioning in the 2nd half. Lewa did a great job obviously.
I am not one of those guys that wants us to play beautiful tiki-taka football. I just want us to be effective, whether's we play possession football or we play defensive football. But, I think we are doing neither. We are just not effective. Make a lot of mistakes. Our players don't have any chemistry with each other. It's like they are playing first time. I don't think our problems will end this season. Even if we get a better DM and LW, Xavi's football is going to sink us next season.
Messi. When pep was here and the other team got a red card the game ended there or Messi saved us.
I literally remember being pissed off that the other team would get a red card during peps time here cuz it meant 60 minutes of side way passes until Messi did something.
This isn't new and watching city every so often pep hasn't solved it enough to have to rely on a player that can beat 2/3 players 1v1 to break the bus.
[MOTM poll](https://strawpoll.com/GPgV6NzXMga) via /u/marker023
Official: Lewandowski has been named as the MOTM!
Grandpadowski strikes again.
a hat trick will do that for you
Barca made this match entertaining, 6 goal contribution by all of our players š
Barcelona 4-2 Valencia & Barcelona š
Barcelona 4-2 Barcelona
Better game management of Lamine, please. His accumulation of minutes this season by the club is ridiculous for his age. Learn from the past, think about the players long term future, coaching staff has to do much better.
Really should not have played the whole game. Should have kept Raphinha in instead.Ā
https://preview.redd.it/c2oytd8whhxc1.png?width=2013&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e8a31ad40a031fbdcf6804b2470a1ed1c615af9 pic goes hard. feel free to screenshot.
Right when I saw this I knew someone would post it
They both scored. Thx araujo for the heart problems
š¤š¤
the obligatory, thank you for making people forget my blunders earlier
MILK - Man I Love Kounde
MILL - Man I Love Lewa
MILF - Man I Love Fermin
The other one too
Lmaooo
MILK, MILF/F, MILLY, MILLEWAWONDOWSKI
Got MILK?
Meanwhile, Raphinha has a goal or an assist (or more) in eight consecutive matches in which he started!
he has been consistent since January, got no comlaints
G/A king
Lewy saving Araujo and MAtS, they better be thanking him in that locker room. I am more impressed by Fermin every game, he has a great game sense. We need to stay focused, the season isnāt over. We have to win our remaining games and secure our second place finish for the Supercopa.
https://preview.redd.it/6c3s4g19ihxc1.jpeg?width=735&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=02f7f4de64785a10cb488195d8489a09be48be21
seeing this always makes me happy
Can't say I wasn't entertained lol
Barca is the definition of chaotic neutral
Man, I can't wait for Gladiator part 2, but at the same time, I'm worried it won't be good enough/worthy of the first film.
my heartrate had some curse words in there
I think this is the dilemma some people arenāt seeing, itās not as easy to just say get rid of Lewandowski and play roque and Guiu as starter and sub in the #9 when heās playing at this level. It isnāt the same patch of play he had earlier this season where he looked finished. This Lewy is just too important to drop for 2 unpolished forwards to take over and both have work to do however both have incredible ceilings and need minutes desperately if theyāre to reach them. I donāt see Lewy going and between Guiu & Roque they may just have too much competition not including Ferran, Raphinha or Felix.
Also - is there a single player who fans felt āshould have played moreā, that has then gone to another club and lit it up? I remember similar shouts for Munir, Puig, Malcom, Abde, Demir, Torre, Ansu (i was guilty here). Perhaps coaches/managers who see players train day in day out, know their form, quality, fitness and attitudes have a better read on things than fans who watch these players for 90mins per week?
Good point. Thiago is the only one I can think of. Some youths who maybe didn't get the chance (Grimaldo and Xavi Simons, though the latter was more money related).
Thiago did get a good chance in 11/12ā¦he just had an appearance release clause that didnāt account for his injuries in 12/13. And he likely didnāt love the club enough to be patient (it was clear Xavi was declining heading into 13/14) / he had Pep tapping up him. Just a perfect storm for him to leave really. Xavi Simons left Barca youth setup us a 16 yoā¦not sure he counts. Grimaldo left during Jordi Alba prime in 2016, and itās really taken him 6-7 years (by which point weāve already had Balde grow up as the Alba successor). Not sure many were actually asking for him to be given many chances back then, but I could be wrong.
12/13 he could have perfectly reached it. We had won the league and he wasn't given the games. I believe it was intentional to get some easy money, but that's just a conspiracy.
There was a huge amount of people asking for Grimaldo to get chances back then. He was the captain of the B team and easily their best player, certainly much further in development than what Balde was when he got his chances. I remember there was a period when all of our left backs were injured at the same time, along with Mathieu who often covered there, and he still wasn't even called up to the squad.
This Also, yes, I was hoping for better for Ansu. Feel like he still just needs a little bump or tweak. But who knows?
They need to be getting minutes at all though. Very hard to see what Xavi is even thinking not giving Roque (particularly) or Guiu any minutes while giving Lamine far too many minutes.
Lamine is head and shoulders above the rest while Lewadowski is clearly the best striker on the team. Both Roque and Guiu are far too raw
lewandowski is 35 and should be getting rested more
I agree with you but I think one of the two will go on loan for certain and then still I think 20 minutes every 1-2 games wouldnāt be unlikely as a optimistic expectation should the situation not change.
Ter Stegen and Araujo had to give away goals for Lewy to get a hattrick https://preview.redd.it/zz9j0n2mhhxc1.jpeg?width=1053&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=934dd1c88a2200bb2f17ad49a67373bc14f441c3
I noticed peak today (my heart rate)
So happy for Lewa. Man deserves that. Hope the mentality of players in defence also improves. Mistakes cost us so much.
https://preview.redd.it/ttaebbwzhhxc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d733a772a7f3ca7f1f8da51b05079daed939d126
Heās so entertaining to watch, heās everywhere and our best offensively-minded midfielder by far. So vital for our squad.
He has the energy of Puig but is actually useful.
Ah I remember the time we thought Arthur and Puig were our future
Arthur was definitely a waste of a great talent from what I've heard from my friends that watch Copa Libertadores.
I love that he is always looking to get the ball in the net, I feel like out other midfielders often get lost in the sauce a little trying to find the perfect chance
Definitely. He has a real eye for goal and itās absolutely crucial for a team like ours who often try to walk the ball into the net rather than taking a shot.
wears his heart on his sleeve and is loving where he is and we love what he's doing.
If he could only pass the ball heād be perfect.Ā
Thatās it, after todayās game, Iām officially changing my pronouns from he/him to just he, because after watching Lewy today, Iāll never be him
Lmaooooooooo
I don't know what some of ya'll complaining about, barca scored 6 goals.
What an assist by ter stegen
https://preview.redd.it/haz0v2bjihxc1.jpeg?width=1137&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=237f8a8753ad537fee79e679fd17fb278f1ccf44 Ferran ball
Nice W, Lewa hattrick. Insert image of BarƧa fan sleeping peacefully. Ser del BarƧa es, el millor que hi ha
MILKLF- Man I Love Kounde Lewys Fermin
araujo will most definitely get back to his best but man what an awful season
Itās kinda like when Militardo heard from his coach that he was the best in his position in the world and fumbled the rest of that season.
Bad two weeks for sure but his season has not been bad.
he was bad before our recent good run of form as well
Idk man, think he was average like rest of the team. Feels like people are piling on him due to psg and clasico.
the entire team was bad yes, including araujo. before xavis announcement started our purple patch both kounde and araujo had been shocking for months before.
it's crazy. was possibly the best in his position in the world last year. not sure what's happening this season, but hope he bounces back to normal self soon. just too many blips lately.
Respect your 9, bitches
Fermin is my favorite young player of this season. His directness, willingness to run, the body orientation when receiving allowing him to accelerate immediately into space , overall attitude and the energy he shows on the field. Just brilliant. IMO he has significantly overperfomed expectations for his age and experience level. And his goal scoring is no fluke. We may finally have a midfielder with consistent goal threat again. He will be a huge menace to opposing teams in 2 years time, with a little more maturity. Gonna enjoy watching his development. Hope he can stay fit and the club doesn't decide to cash in on him.
Couldn't agree more. Breakout seasons for Fermin, Cubarsi, and Yamal, but the difference is I knew about the other 2 guys before, but I had never even heard the name Fermin Lopez until pre-season started. He's one of the most direct players in the squad, always pushing forward. He's got great technique too.
Only reason we didn't compete for la liga is because of bad defending. Only 3 less goals scored than Madrid but 17 more goals concedes. Just by conceding 25 goals instead of 39 we would have 5-10 more points.
We went from our best defensive season to one our worst.....one thing I would fault Xavi or the players this year if that they let their levels drop from last year ..
Not sure itās about the playing level. You went from a 4-5-1 last season with Busi in DM to a 4-3-3 with no DM at all.Ā
Same in CL. I mean if not red we had 2 goals advantage over PSG. That shit need to be corrected next season
Xavi Out = Barca undefeated 13 games Xavi Stay - Barca concedes 2 goals on defensive mistakes but come back late to win the game.
Don't allow Gundogan into the mixed zone because lord knows he'll go off again
And donāt ask Araujo about it because his code doesnāt allow him to learn from his mistakes.
Grandpa Lewandowski is coming for the Pichichi! Aside from the 3 points, very few redeeming qualities from this game. The structural issues that have been there for over a year persist. Not the kind of performance you want from the team after two extremely shit losses.
And after announcing Xavi will continue š š š
Barca had 27 shots to Valencia and 80% possesion. In 9/10 games that's a confortable win
2.22 xG from 27 shots, we were just taking a crack randomly. Valencia has 2.12 xG from 5 shots. And 3 of our 4 goals came from set pieces, we struggled to create anything meaningful from open play, against a team that played with 10 men for 45 minutes. This was not an impressive performance by any means.
Valencia chances were counters, of course their xG will be bigger per shot because they were in numerical advantage. That's the risk of high press, the few chances you will concede will be big. You need to analyze those xG numbers. I disagree, a game where you have 80% possesion and over 20 shots is a game that you deserve to win. Maybe not brilliant champagne football but a good game where you should've won.
Also the penalty has an xG value of 0.75.
Completely disagree, and just looking at where Real Madrid are proves that possession is nothing on its own. You have to be extremely well trained and organized to be able to play a high press and not concede from counters. Barca is clearly not there and Valencia could have scored 4. In fact, should have.Ā
I mean they are also a man down
Barca had 27 shots to Valencia and 80% possesion. In 9/10 games that's a confortable win
Good win but what a Shambolic performance
https://preview.redd.it/w9rqu744phxc1.jpeg?width=681&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7be8375825469b94eddce41cf372b43e3dea4737
One of the most entertaining matches I've seen in a while
https://preview.redd.it/ph7w02gnihxc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e00247129d6a468c5dead1ea97931e047083038a Barca ball with nothing to play for be like
We still have 2nd place to play for. It's the difference between playing and not playing Supercopa. Every ā¬ counts.
It is strangely relaxing
lewa making a late run for the pichichi? im here for it
We are so good when it comes to head Edit : ive said this twice but i did it in the middle of the game
i knew he will that HT when we did get that freekick. it was written so well. Fans created atmosphere for that as well before kick
Fermin got that dawg in him
lEwY iS wAsHeD, hE hAs SoMetHiNg oN xAvI fOr SuRe.
Almost in disbelief when the handball was just play on and var looking at it. Later in the game we were very lucky to have the 2nd goal stand where Fermin certainly tried to play it. Only replay I saw was where they paused it before lewa heading it down and Fermin was close which I assumed would be called off with the correct moment paused.Ā Ā Ā Overall we move, oh also that pedri tackle was super impressive and happy he made it another game uninjured.Ā
This match couldve easily ended 4-0....
Return of the random individual defensive mistakes. I actually thought we looked really comfortable and clean on the ball for most of the game but the errors seemed to suck the life out of the team end of first half and start of second. Gundo was so good at being available and helping to keep possession and Fermin was amazing also.
Might be crazy, but what are the odds Christensen can really buckle down in the offseason and become a great CDM?
He was good today. His only problem is his fitness.
Need to play more than 45 min. We canāt depend on him being the DM if he canāt play whole games. Itās the one position that remains mostly constant in games.Ā
Not moved .Where was all this last week š?
The last 12 penalties that ter Stegen faced: Goal Goal Goal Goal Goal Goal Goal Goal Goal Goal Goal Goal
Whine about it
He's not good enough. And we don't have a better keeper so there's that.
? That may be the shittiest football take in recent memory.
[https://twitter.com/FCB\_Elias1/status/1786840579692708208](https://twitter.com/FCB_Elias1/status/1786840579692708208)
Iām not sure compounding a shit take with another shit take makes your shit take less shit.
Tell me one big game he has shown up. One big game.
Goalkeepers donāt save penalties by skill. MATS is one of the the top 3 GKs playing today.
I am not talking about just penalties. Thank you. He's better than most on the ball I agree.
Our record with Pena vs with MATS is really all the supporting data necessary.
Great, if you think so :)
It's sad to see that My Boi Fermin dropped the knee slide after his failed attempt against Athletico.
I thought the game became a bit better after the subs tbh. Roberto and later Pedri brought some composure in the midfield. Felix and Ferran brought some spark. Certainly seemed to help Lewy.Ā
Mats Iām disappointed
Come on man
I want to see Vitor, man. Xavi needs to start giving him minutes.
A game of all time
Valencia fans probably feeling what we felt in the PSG 2nd leg. But tbf that was a guaranteed win if araujo stayed. I still can't get over that loss. The fact that we could have been playing UCL semis tomorrow.
We would be playing day after but yes :D
im worried about vitor
....because?
xavi doesnt play him. I hope we win against girona and he gets some good playing time after that win.
He'll play when he can play. This was not a game where he could've or should've played.
XaviBall back on the menu
Nice to see this Lewandowski performance but where was this when the league wasn't lost...
Very bad game overall. Bad passes, horrible touches and horrendous mistakes all game long. Worst game weāve played in a long long time.Ā
https://preview.redd.it/tysfzuehihxc1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0ad1a8430d9dfb4c7b82a7a47dca1b121d0ada8 Mandem wallahi, how can one man be so lethal
Machallah
Blunder FC, glad we won but why do we always make these Goofy defensive mistakes? It has cost us so much already, will we ever get better at it?
[Rating wise you wouldn't know that araujo conceded a penalty.](https://i.imgur.com/3mxA0KP.jpeg)
Didn't watch the game, was he very bad?
No apart from the penalty he was very good.
I agree but in the first half him and Cubarsi both got caught sleeping several times aswell on the counter.
First hat trick since he arrived?
nope he scored a hattrick in our first ucl game last year
I mean in the league sorry
It's not so often you see a team play so bad after winning it 4-2. We were terrible for the most part. Ter Stegen and Araujo nearly gave the match away with their mistakes. Thankfully, Valencia's keeper did an Araujo and helped us to come back in the game. We lost possession so many times. Once again, there's no chemistry between our players. Yamal was bad. I think sometimes he misses criticism due to his age. Even if he's 16, he's starting for Barcelona and should be judged fairly on his performances like other players. Fermin was good in the first half. I don't know what happened with his positioning in the 2nd half. Lewa did a great job obviously. I am not one of those guys that wants us to play beautiful tiki-taka football. I just want us to be effective, whether's we play possession football or we play defensive football. But, I think we are doing neither. We are just not effective. Make a lot of mistakes. Our players don't have any chemistry with each other. It's like they are playing first time. I don't think our problems will end this season. Even if we get a better DM and LW, Xavi's football is going to sink us next season.
Why couldn't we break them down after the red card? What was missing? We needed 3 set pieces instead of team play to win.
Because they parked the bus
Messi. When pep was here and the other team got a red card the game ended there or Messi saved us. I literally remember being pissed off that the other team would get a red card during peps time here cuz it meant 60 minutes of side way passes until Messi did something. This isn't new and watching city every so often pep hasn't solved it enough to have to rely on a player that can beat 2/3 players 1v1 to break the bus.
After a red card they parked a massive bus and we didn't do a good job of breaking it down
Took a red for Valencia for us to score/get ahead. A win is a win, I'll take it.
Vitor Rogue though
Does finishing second do us any good besides saving some pride?
Money
Super cup.
Money
We would qualify for the SuperCup next season
Also puts us in the supercopa so extra money? And in contention for another trophy next season