Quique Setién.
The detractors of Luis Enrique have criticised his propensity to be reliant on his attacking trident, with not enough emphasis on midfield. Irrespective if the transfers were down to him, the acquisitions of Rakitic, Turan, and Gomes has seen him lambasted for favouring physical midfielders, which has led to Barcelona having a paucity of options of those that can function as a metronome. As a result, Barcelona have been inconspicuous at times this season. Conversely, Las Palmas play a brand of football that would have those associated with Barcelona, enamoured. In La Liga, Quique Setién's Las Palmas average the second highest possession. For a team that are in adversity, in comparison to the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona, they're far from docile, accumulating draws against Real Marid 2-2 and 3-3 respectively, with Las Palmas having more possession on both occasions, coming back from trailing 3-0 down at half time despite having 71% possession and then coming back to make the game 3-3. Not quite Barcelona overturning a 4-0 deficit to PSG, but nonetheless enough to make neutrals that watched the game to feel rampantly optimistic. Perhaps the following streameable encapsulates Las Palmas enthralling audiences.
Furthermore, a sizeable number of academy prospects still linger in the purgatory of success and failure having struggled to break through into the first team without condemning themselves entirely, with perhaps the most notable example being Grimaldo, who left in acrimonious circumstances, in the sense that his contract wasn't renewed allowing him to leave in January, no buy back clause, he didn't make a single appearance for the Barcelona first team, with Luis Enrique preferring experienced alternatives to Alba in Adriano and Jérémy Mathieu and of course the fact that this was in spite of the fact that he was highly rated. Quique Setién predominantly has three established (probably 27 +) academy players (Mesa, Viera and Gomez as the CDM, LCM, RCM just like Barcelona had players who came from the academy as the CDM, LCM, RCM in Busquets, Iniesta, and Xavi) who are integral to the side for ball retention purposes, and he's voiced his frustration at the preference of physical players at youth level, as exemplified by "now I see that players are starting to work on tactical aspects from an early age,” he says. “After half an hour there are guys who have not touched the ball. Every day they are allowed to dribble less, and the taller boys are privileged.” In this way, you can see how he shares some of the ideologies of Johan Cruyff.
As a manager Quique Setién hasn't won anything. However, having won trophies isn't paramount when it comes to being a candidate for being the manager of Barcelona. In 2008, Mourinho was a manager that had won the Champions League and Europa league at Porto, and on the league twice in the Premiership, but according to the 9 point checklist drawn by Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain he didn't meet as much of the criteria as Guardiola, who had only been managing the B team for a year. This is derived from only two of the 9 points being related to football, with the other 7 being about culture. Enrique guided Roma to their worst league finish in a decade, as they failed to qualify for any European campaign, although he did take Celta Vigo to a top 10 finish who just finished above relegation the previous season. Similarly, Setién took promoted side to 11th when the odds were that they would be one of the sides that were relegated back to the Segunda. Quique Setién is Spanish, has La Liga experience, and values the culture of Barcelona.
