A big problet people never want to address is his tactical naivety. He destabilises Barcelona in a 433 because he keeps coming in centrally. The channel is then occupied by the rcm and this means a lot of the time the opposition has a spare man in mf or can counter through the middle leaving Busquets to much space to defend by himself.
Yesterday he kept repeating the same thing over and over again and he had more time to intervene when he actually went to thw flank.
It's as you said, they either need to play always 343 all season to accommodate his movement and not get numerically disadvantaged or change the profile of their central axis, shifting to a more athletic player.
The fact that Kante fits this Barcelona side more than Iniesta is a damming indictment on Luis Enrique.
That problem was worked around every season this team had great success, first Alves had enough stamina and speed to be Messi's pair on the attack and still be on time for defense, he was a monster that basically helped Messi in the last third, Xavi in the middle and then took good care of his duties when in his own area
Also, for a great part of our best seasons (with Pep) he also had the help of Keita, a truly underrated player that was under the shadow of Iniesta and Xavi but still was key to this team success, lately when Alves was out of gas we got Rakitic and lost Xavi. Rakitic is a decent merge of Keita and Xavi, the guy covered for Alves when age caught up to him and he wasn't able to reign in the whole right side of the pitch.
Then, we have another imbalance, we used to play Alves and a more defensive minded LB like Abidal, we even went against United in the 09' final with Sylvinho and Puyol due to injuries but it worked because the team was always built with the idea of balancing our defensive lines with 3 defenders + DM covering and adjusting to the chaos the lack of Alves in some moments could create. After we signed Alba Busquets has been overworked every season.
This team has survived since Pep's departure thanks to the genious of Messi/Iniesta first and the MSN lately. But the tactical naivety is not a problem created by Messi as he's a guy that basically covers 3 spots in attack, pulls 2 or 3 defenders towards him and at least has an ok work rate most games, the problems are.
1) We lacked a defensive leftback
2) Now we also lack a rightback
2) We can't defend well with deep possession anymore, since Xavi left most of our passes happen between the CB's and Busquets because we lack quality in the midfield to take the ball away from our own goal
3) We really needed someone like Umtiti almost 3 years ago, Mascherano has done a great job as a CB considering his set of skills, but that shouldn't have been his job for so long
4) This team needs to defend counters with at least one more player, better with 2 more, you can't be consistent when you leave the duty to stop counters to 3 players (Busquets, Pique and Mascherano)
5) We need smarter players, attacking positions are overcrowded with static players (4 sometimes, the fullbacks + 2 midfielders) and that becomes a chokepoint for both Messi and Neymar, with 7 players around the area Suarez tends to disappear too.
6) We will need to address a new situation soon, Suarez enters his 30's and he won't be able to work his ass off every game, covering the workrate of almost 2 guys
Starting next season, unless we somehow manage to sign five players and replicate the roles of our earlier 433 I'd like to see something different or our key players will be held hostages to our squad limitations, the 3-5-2 has future if we manage to snatch something like
------------Ter Stegen----------
-----Defender--Pique--Umtiti----
Roberto--Rakitic--Busquets--Alba
-------------Messi-------------
------Suarez------Neymar------
And there's no negotiation with what skills that defender needs, this squad lacks height so we need another tall CB, he obviously has to be decent with the ball and have a good situational sense. That should be our starting 11 next year in our tougher/away games and then in the camp nou and against smaller teams Iniesta could take Rakitic's role with a step forward towards Messi or even subbing Messi himself.
If we're not going towards that and try to keep the 433 we're throwing another hail mary unless we sign 2 RB's, 2 CB's (or a guy who plays both RB/CB), another DM, another "Rakitic" (someone like Ander) and at least a winger. And we need to get rid of two players from Arda, Rafinha, Dennis and Gomes.
Anything different from that would be wasting Messi's last brightest years.
