Even Guardiola with unlimited funds had a bad first season at City. I would wait at least Until the end of the season to judge Xavi. He has made mistakes, of course, just like everyone else.
Xavi (Spanish Lego Pep) | Manager watch
- Thread starter Samid
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Arteta was a decent footballer. He used to play like a 37 years old even in his 20s. No need to rewrite the history.
Some had better squads for sure. But being worse than Koeman after taking over his squad and investing a huge amount does look very bad for Xavi.
Yup, I was thinking the same the moment the board started to pull all those levers and is something I had already expressed in this forum.
It is very understandable for a novice manager to struggle at the beginning but with the squad they've assembled it just had brought a ton on pressure on Xavi, and Barcelona overall, to deliver results short term just because of the amount of investment.
It's not all Xavi's faults to be in this situation but if he fails this season to win anything he would need to go. At least that would be my position if Real Madrid was in a similar situation.
He has the making of a great manager and Barcelona have largely been really good since he came in. That said, he is a very young and inexperienced manager and it shows. Still hasn't quite figured out the part where you have to adapt to your players, not the other way around
Agree barcelona might have been better served not going all in this season and giving him another year to grow. Unless they collapse i think they'd be making a mistake if they sack him, but then again i'd much rather they keep him over hiring someone like Tuchel, so
Agree barcelona might have been better served not going all in this season and giving him another year to grow. Unless they collapse i think they'd be making a mistake if they sack him, but then again i'd much rather they keep him over hiring someone like Tuchel, so
If you can blame the INTER debacle at individual defensive errors, I think the blame rests with Xavi on this one (classico defeat). First of all Biscuits is too old to play in the middle of the park, he's past it for a high intensity game like this. Gavi while lacking in experience has the legs to run. I never understood the Raphina hype, but him and Dembele should have been subbed earlier. Ferran and Ansu Fati def had a + impact when they came on, but by then the game was done and dusted. Jordi Alba for Balde was also an ineffective switch. Wonder if Xavi is too loyal to players he played with
I wouldn't mind not winning anything this season as long as our football improves as well as the team's fighting spirit. Barcelona didn't train properly for 5 years Nor signed properly. It's not easy to revert that in one year alone.
They're morons for using all their 'levers'. Instant success was always going to be difficult and they should have been humble and focused on youth/ developing a team for the long term instead of irresponsibly selling off assets. If anything it's only added pressure on Xavi but I imagine he's played his part in these decisions and deserves the pressure now.
But why pull all those levers if not for winning big trophies? You may as well have been more conservative in your approach.
How many more levers does Laporta give Xavi before he asks him to step down for free?
Fati should be starting ahead of Raphinha who I’m unsure is up to the task of a big club yet.
I still think he will get it right eventually, but he’s showing his inexperience.
I still think he will get it right eventually, but he’s showing his inexperience.
Barcelona, United and Real Madrid are the biggest clubs in the world. United is already owned by some rich sugar daddies but Madrid and Barca are not. There is no way to get money outside of what the team generate/have. If you don't sign anybody, you don't generate any expectation. Only thanks to the new players the Camp Nou has been getting over 80k people per game this season.
Letting outselves being weak in both the field and the transfermarket will only lead to shameful situations like the one vs Eintracht Frankfurt.
All the assets sold are not even 10% of Barca’s annual revenue, so even if it is a risky bet Barcelona won't disappear if it doesn't work.
You haven’t been here long, have you?
A few months. But you guys spend big, almost as much, (sometimes more) than Manchester City. I mean you deserve it. I grew up watching you and Arsenal fight for the league before the oíl clubs arrived.
You always seem to have over 100 million to spend despite your performance so I don't know if your owners are really that bad as you make them seem.
We only spend when the Glazers allow us to spend our own money, it isn't theirs. The club generates it, the Glazers skim off what they want and then graciously allow us a piece of what's left over to spend in the summer. I'm not saying we couldn't have spent far wiser over the last decade, but the difference between us and City is more than just what's been spent. Their owners have put over a billion in, ours have taken over a billion out.
If you read more about what our complaints are then you will realize that we are not complaining over the money spent. We have spent more than anyone else. The problem is that these owners have not setup any sort of functional structure within the club. There are amateurs who are responsible for spending money. They dont know who deserves what.
Sancho on 350k pw, 50m each for Fred and Bissaka should tell you the money aint the problem, but the football structure.
These feckers have also done nothing about improving training infrastructure and the stadium.
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I'm sorry but
Manchester United's money is self generated. We're the original large self generating club that lead the way in the 1990s-2000s that Madrid and Barcelona followed in how to maximize your own money through marketing and merch. United is the total opposite of a sugar daddy. The sheer size of United is what allows us to spend the same as City.
The Glazers borrowed money to buy us because we were the largest name and biggest self earning club in the world at the time that they could live off and watch the asset grow as the game gets bigger. They didn't have enough money to buy us and their type of ownership would be blocked now. Malcolm Glazer saw an opportunity to get something lucrative they couldn't afford.
Yet people were ready to have a go at Koeman every week.
Why do clubs hire ex players as manager? It rarely works out and then you are in the situation where a club hero is becoming a villain amongst the fans, right up to the point of them being sacked and everyone cheers. Keep your legacies intact, go manage elsewhere.
You try winning games after the board sell the wrong de Jong.
He has the making of a great manager and Barcelona have largely been really good since he came in. That said, he is a very young and inexperienced manager and it shows. Still hasn't quite figured out the part where you have to adapt to your players, not the other way around
Agree barcelona might have been better served not going all in this season and giving him another year to grow. Unless they collapse i think they'd be making a mistake if they sack him, but then again i'd much rather they keep him over hiring someone like Tuchel, so
It's funny because Xavi's biggest influence is obviously Pep I'd assume, but Pep himself never really learned to adapt to his players until his time at City. He was just lucky enough to always play his favored system because he had 3 of the best footballers of all time to help run it while he could tinker with the other pieces. Xavi doesn't have the same luxury, so either he's going to have to learn to adapt (especially with finding the best non-Busquets midfield) or he's going to be sacked quickly.
It’s the clubs own money, hence why we have a massive amount of debt, if we were owned by some billionaire with infinite money who actually invested it we’d all be much happier.
Same happened here. Some refused to criticize Ole as he won us the CL years back.
So many weirdo fans on this board obsessed with Barca. Leve and let leve, I say.
It is interesting to see how outsiders perceive us, and even moreso when they underestimate just how big we are commercially
To be fair, Barcelona played 54 games in 20/21, Koeman's first season. That was not a bad season; they finished with 79 points in La Liga, won the Copa del Rey, and had a 5W1L record in the group stages of the CL. The situation was not really as critical.
They were in the title race until a shock defeat to Granada, after which their form collapsed. But four of those games (1W2D1L) fall outside the 50 game cutoff. That's when the mood really truly soured.
Not wanting to give you a hard time, just using this post to make a point.
Barcelona have a bunch of injuries in defense since the international break.
But last season, when they won at the Bernabeu 0-4, their defense was Alba-Pique-García-Araujo. When they won 2-4 against Napoli, their defense was Alba-Pique-Araujo-Dest. When they won 4-2 against Atletico their defense was Alves-Araujo-Pique-Alba. Alba, Pique, and García were available for all the last few matches, I think. The only major missing piece there is Araujo, but they had Kounde back for this game and did poorly again. They also conceded 2 against Bayern with Kounde-Christensen-Araujo playing.
It's not as simple as "our starters are injured."
Not really. Guardiola was always quite good at it, to the point he sometimes went overboard with it. This is also the manager who set his team up in a CL semifinal the way his players wanted instead of the way he thought was best
Agreed. The second he got a massive window and brought in big names, the stakes changed massively. It's actually quite a similar story to Ole going from the young attack we had that played pacey counter-attack football to buying huge names like Varane and Ronaldo and being properly expected to compete.
You think Guardiola at Barca adapted the team often? My recollection is they played basically the same way for years, up until it was their undoing against that physical Bayern team. He tinkered way more with Bayern obviously.
Yeah he did. Constantly. Though my point is less about changing things and more about adapting to the players skillsets. In his final season he went overboard with it and had to rein himself in from experimenting too much when he already had a tried and true formula that worked(specifically he really wanted to fit Cesc and Thiago in the starting XI and spent half the season experimenting with academy players like Cuenca to make it work)
That was Tito Villanova against Bayern and he was battling cancer at the time
You are.
From your current squad, ranked by minutes,
Pedri is 3rd (953)
Gavi is 5th (848)
Eric is 7th (679)
Balde is 9th (657)
Araujo is 11th (601)
Fati is far lower, probably out of a sense of caution.
I've been critical of some of Barcelona's decisions this summer and think they went overboard with signings. But on a basic level, you do need to have an actual squad, with actual players. It can't be 20 youths.
Yep my recollection is shite then. Granted I preferred to watch Real much more than Barca in those later Pep years since they became this parody of a team in how they hoarded the ball to the point of boredom (even if it was still incredibly effective)
He has the making of a great manager and Barcelona have largely been really good since he came in. That said, he is a very young and inexperienced manager and it shows. Still hasn't quite figured out the part where you have to adapt to your players, not the other way around
Agree barcelona might have been better served not going all in this season and giving him another year to grow. Unless they collapse i think they'd be making a mistake if they sack him, but then again i'd much rather they keep him over hiring someone like Tuchel, so
I think Barcelona have been very inconsistent this season and have had many shaky games in spite of the small amount of games played. Matches vs Real Sociedad, Celta and Mallorca were very unconvincing for greats part of the 90 minutes and I had the feeling they could have been punished more heavily had the rival strikers been more clinical/inspired (Isak, Aspas). Against more solid opposition (Bayern, Inter twice, Real Madrid), what to say, they were unable to impose themselves in any of the games.
All this after 13 official games this season. It is hard to say they've largely been very good seeing the results.
Hiring Xavi was a mistake. He should have managed a midtable team for three years before coming to Barca. The second coming of Guardiola is doing much worse than Koeman with a much better squad.
Terrible mismanagement. Besides wrecking Barca financially, Laporta has damaged Barcelona’s image and set them back performance wise.
This was the first ever Classico where I rooted for Madrid.
Terrible mismanagement. Besides wrecking Barca financially, Laporta has damaged Barcelona’s image and set them back performance wise.
This was the first ever Classico where I rooted for Madrid.