What do you expect from deadwood ageing players? You expect Valverde to come out with brilliant performance & domination with deadwood in the tough group? The guy managed to get results which they needed and that's why Barcelona was top of the group CL. Inter got knocked out and they were not some poor team. Valverde won them La Liga twice and should be treated better and not being replaced by a nobody that probably much worse than him which clearly Setien did much worse than Valverde. In fact, Barcelona players actually wanted him to stay which should reflect that he still has the support from his players.
Barcelona to fire Valverde. Quique Setién to take over
- Thread starter RoyH1
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Because no one wants the job. Place is a mess.
Not unless they sell a bunch of players or Messi or de Jong. Their debt is crazy high. Much higher than Madrid's and the latter is already halfway through their stadium renovation. And the economic crisis as a resutl of the pandemic is hitting Spain extra hard.Sancho to Barca incoming?
Agreed, no decent manager on the up would want that job.
What freedom to do you have? No decision making on incoming and outgoing players, players who run the dressing room. You basically get to decide at what time the subs come on.
You know you are going to be sacked. Only reason to go there if you are an average manager needing some cash.
Perfect for dithering Dave.
What happened to Poch and his Espanyol links and then him saying he won’t ever manage Barca? Meh
Life and experience changes you.
If that old sentiment still lingered in his mind, he would be a stubborn fool.
I assume that Poch will view that from a professional point of view, which means that for him it would be a nice career opportunity to manage a CL club and one of the greatest players ever.
They are poor compared to what they used to be, but are still there or there abouts. 2nd in Spain and in QFs of the CL. They have some way to hit their rock bottom yet.
They have an ageing squad of superstars that are hard to replace. Look at the age of the team yesterday:
Messi 33
Pique 33
Busquets 32
Suárez 33
Vidal 33
Alba 31
You can blame the managers all you like but when the core of your outfield team is averaging 32.5 years, young energetic teams like Bayern will give you the run-around.
When that old guard calls it a day, which will be any year now, that’s when they’ll hit their bottom, however deep that bottom is. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Because once that happens they get ahold of their finances, the expectations of the fans are somewhat tempered and a capable manager can now come in and take control of the dressing room and shape the team.
Until then they are not attractive. They’ll get vagabond managers only. They are a broke club of overpaid has-beens yet with huge reputations and enormous fan expectations. That’s not a job a sane person wants.
They have an ageing squad of superstars that are hard to replace. Look at the age of the team yesterday:
Messi 33
Pique 33
Busquets 32
Suárez 33
Vidal 33
Alba 31
You can blame the managers all you like but when the core of your outfield team is averaging 32.5 years, young energetic teams like Bayern will give you the run-around.
When that old guard calls it a day, which will be any year now, that’s when they’ll hit their bottom, however deep that bottom is. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Because once that happens they get ahold of their finances, the expectations of the fans are somewhat tempered and a capable manager can now come in and take control of the dressing room and shape the team.
Until then they are not attractive. They’ll get vagabond managers only. They are a broke club of overpaid has-beens yet with huge reputations and enormous fan expectations. That’s not a job a sane person wants.
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I would guess it is a 3 year rebuild. They are not flush with cash at all (wages to turnover at something ridiculous like 75%) so they have to wait until the current overpaid old guard leaves.
If I was the new manager, the first thing I would do is sell Messi and build from zero, I am sure Sir Alex would have done the same.
They have plenty of young players that are pretty good, if they were actually coached and not Messi FC no one would talk about a rebuild. They are in a similar situation to Bayern under Kovac where players are poorly used and they don't look like a team but they do have the players.
Exactly.
Valverde was given pelters for playing reactive football. What else was he meant to do with that squad though? The team is old. It can't play front foot, high intensity football.
Changing the manager is like changing the deckchairs on the Titanic. Any coach worth their salt will take a look at Barcelona's squad and realise that it's incapable of changing style.
If Barca wants to get back to its 2011 levels, with players pressing in packs and wingers in the channels, Barca needs new players. It's that simple. The current squad doesn't have any real pace and power.
Messi isn’t even the beginning of the problem.
Bayern still had mostly very good to great players. Guys like Semedo, Suarez, Roberto, Busquets, Vidal, Rakitic et al look finished. Pique, Alba, Messi „simply“ need better coaching. I agree.
But as long as they cannot get rid of their deadwood they are in trouble.
Sell messi. How?
He won't. They won't hire him
I'm not sure you'd last that long if you sold a living legend and then lost a couple of games I'm afraid.
Barcelona also have very good players and a bunch of young and very young talented players that need to be prioritized and coached. The likes of Firpo, Dembélé, Fati, Todibo, Araujo, Miranda, Puig and De Jong are talented and have been good when used properly in the last two years. Griezmann has been good when not shunted on the left as an out and out winger and he actually brings intensity and defensive discipline, Messi is Messi and Sergi Roberto isn't finished, nor are Alba, Ter Stegen or Lenglet.
The issue is that things look worse because they are not coached, the entire gameplan has been to pass it to Messi and pray.
I hope everybody is taking notes: Setién's shambolic-pathetic run at Barça is proof that there are really limited (even mediocre) managers out there-midtable at best, that for some reason became first division managers but shouldn't get anywhere near a huge Top club (that includes Man Utd). Some decent matches with Betis shouldn't give you the Barça job. Valverde deserved the sack for real, but the board fecked up with Setién.
This 8-2 is proof that you just can't take a Championship-League One manager and expect him to win the UCL.
This 8-2 is proof that you just can't take a Championship-League One manager and expect him to win the UCL.
Similar to what Pep did, start afresh by getting rid of Ronaldinho and Deco. Luckily Eto'o was kept on.
They are in serious debt and while they generate plenty of cash, it's not sustainable to pay millions on wages and transfers. Need to sort out their transfer strategy, proper root and branch.
Setién isn't a Championship-League One manager, you have a point about the need for a certain profile of managers when it comes to top clubs, so you shouldn't undermine it with silly points. Setién is a midtable manager, he won't be able to squeeze the little extra that separates a good team with a great one. It's comparable to Kovac for Bayern.
Do you think if they sold Suarez that would help Griezmann? He seems to be shoehorned into the wrong position so Suarez can play. I don't think they have been getting the best out of him.
If that is levelled at Ole then you only have to look at what Barcelona did by sacking the successful Rijkaard and appointing the inexperienced Pep.
It's not about whether you think the manager is Championship or not, it's about the long term plan and the coaches vision, and investing in it. We wouldn't have appointed Sir Alex had it not been for Martin Edwards buying into his vision. There were other high profile managers out there at the time.
Barcelona's feck up is because they didn't appoint the right coach with a vsion for the future, as @JPRouve stated above, they have mega talented youngsters but there hasn't been a long term plan; it literally has been, 'give it to Messi and he'll sort it.' Reminds me a bit of Utd when Sir Matt was coming to an end, it was a case of Best,Law and Charlton would get us out of trouble. The team should have been ripped up after 1968 and the same with Barca
No, Valverde was their Kovac. Setién certainly has not been their Flick. There are voices who claim that an interim (Amor, Kluivert) could have won the Liga and lose against Bayern with "dignity": 2-1, 3-1 or whatever. But they appointed an incredibly limited-clueless tactical mess of a manager.
This makes no sense. The point is that Kovac like Setién or Valverde are good coaches but they aren't elite coaches, at the top when you face top teams you need to be at your best which isn't something that Valverde, Setién or Kovac can do, it doesn't make them Championship/League One managers, it simply means that they aren't at the very top of the managing pyramid.
No because the same thing happened when Suarez was injured, so I wouldn't link it to Suarez. The weird thing is that it is in game that you see how Griezmann click with the team, when Valverde was desperate and would give more freedom to the attacker Messi would generally play more centrally and Griezmann would float around and basically operate like Messi, he isn't as good as Messi at it but Messi is better around the box than almost every other players and Griezmann was actually good in that creative role from a deeper position. So the question is more about whether Messi wants to go back to the role Pep gave him with Griezmann playing deeper. And other thing that I found interesting was that Griezmann's runs were often not picked by his teammates, I don't know if it was deliberate or if they are simply not used to have a more direct runner.
Guy got the role in the first place because he played some possession football against Barcelona in a game and Busquets and a few fans on twitter said he was class
And then did some vintage Valverde with Vidal as forward and technical players watching the game from the stands.
We should make a bid for De Jong, quality young player.
I suppose the OP title will change imminently? No need for a new thread. Proper hot mess Barca are right now. I'm loving it!
Strange one, isn’t it? I think every single mauling Barcelona have had in the past 3 seasons — Liverpool; Roma; Bayern have been a 442 overload.
You simply must overload your side with technical ability in the latter rounds of the CL. Pep did it in both matches against Madrid with massive success.
2007 was the last time there was no Spanish team in CL semi finals.
He did the same thing against Real Madrid, in a game where they were embarassing despite the respectable scoreline.
Setien won't survive what happened last night but those above him have to take a large share of the responsibility. They sacked Valverde either 6 months too late or 6 months too early and appointed a bloke who was on a hiding to nothing.
It's very hard to succeed playing Barca football when 7 of your outfield 10 are over the age of 30. Griezmann, at the age 29, is close to joining the over 30 brigade. A complete regeneration is required regardless of who the next manager is.
It's very hard to succeed playing Barca football when 7 of your outfield 10 are over the age of 30. Griezmann, at the age 29, is close to joining the over 30 brigade. A complete regeneration is required regardless of who the next manager is.
Seen as he's one of the few players in the squad that has resale value I wouldn't put it past them to sell him and keep playing someone like Rakitic to shore up their finances. They kinda did the same thing with selling 23yo very promising Arthur for 30yo Pjanic.
And disastrous as that would be given that they desperately need young blood. I don't see them letting go of their ageing megastars on their humongous contracts.
Swap for Matic+cash so that Barca can do their creative accounting to balance the books.
Poch high pressing game won't work at Barca. Wrong manager for the role.
Poch excels with fresh young players with high work rate...if he goes to Barca, expect him to be sacked fast.
Poch excels with fresh young players with high work rate...if he goes to Barca, expect him to be sacked fast.
He is quality, yes. But he seems too soft to be our holding CM.
Don't think he can be our water carrier.
You have a squad that is, by-and-large worth nothing because most of the players are nearing the end of their career and are on huge, unsustainable contracts.
Messi, Suarez, Busquets, Pique, Alba, Vidal, Rakitic... maybe even Griezmann. Those aren't players anyone would pay money for, given their age and contracts. Who will pay 45m a year in this climate to the nearly 30-yo, under-performing Griezmann and also pay a fee to Barca? You're in the same situation as United was with Sanchez last year. You can't recoup any of the money spent on him.
How will the club regenerate until these players are moved on and the club is freed of their salaries? And with what money, given that transfers largely cost up-front cash (especially for young players) which Barca hasn't got. And which manager will have the authority to move these players on?
It's a shambles...
CDM is a position we could do with strengthening, we could chuck in Fred plus a wad of cash.
I already said it in december, you simply can't compete on highest level with 15 players total and with 7 of them being 30+, while 2 of them are always unavailable for various reasons. warning signs were there even in their previous season - they were only saved by the fact Madrid were still recovering from Lopetegui and not replacing Ronaldo. as soon as Madrid became even semi-decent side, they lost it. I mean, you could have great attack and bad defence or you could have great defence but struggle to score, but current Barca is the worst mix. they concede for fun while looking completely undercoached in attack and physicality is completely gone from this team. they remind me a bit of that Milan side with Seedorf, Beckham and Ronaldinho that we destroyed about 10 years ago. they were full of soon to be retired players. you can have all the experience needed, but it simply doesn't matter when your legs are gone.
while I never rated Valverde, Setién is trully something else. long ago I watched "Wild Strawberries" by Bergman and there was this dream with faceless man haunting main character and that's what Setién reminds me of. a man without face, without voice, without emotions, without any sort of personality, a complete non factor on the bench. zero influence, zero authority. one of the worst missmatch I've ever seen. he's just an old man sitting on the bench and wondering what is happening.
while I never rated Valverde, Setién is trully something else. long ago I watched "Wild Strawberries" by Bergman and there was this dream with faceless man haunting main character and that's what Setién reminds me of. a man without face, without voice, without emotions, without any sort of personality, a complete non factor on the bench. zero influence, zero authority. one of the worst missmatch I've ever seen. he's just an old man sitting on the bench and wondering what is happening.