La Liga Round 11: Mallorca vs FC Barcelona

The Franchise wrote:

CBarca wrote:That goal was amazing.

Still, the amount we concede is worrying.

Well I would say our defending isnt that bad.

The two goals, one was a Mascherano mistake...we need to accept he is going to give one goal scoring chance away a game it seems.

The second is a pen. Busquets cant put his hand that high in the box, he should know that.

Other than that, they had the odd counter but I think they were all of our misplaced passes.

Yeah, the defending wasn't really that bad- but that's just what worries me. In the same way that some teams win without playing very well, we seem to concede without even defending poorly.

It's good the overall defending is OK, but I'd certainly like to see more concentration where we aren't letting in those silly goals (Mascherano...)- it's OK against Mallorca because we'll win anyway, but can we say the same against top sides? Hell, I'd be surprised if this type of thing doesn't hurt us against a couple smaller sides.

You can't always score a bunch, so despite the quality of overall defending, I find it worrying how much we concede.

Mascherano is making these kinds of things a habit- I wouldn't mind starting Bartra a lot more now.

I'm personally more scared of smaller teams than bigger teams..
Bigger teams do not usually park the buss unless their name is Chelsea, or Inter.

Hope Mascherano doesn't play next game now that we have Pique. He shouldn't play for a while until he gets his act together. Pique + Bartra ffs.

Heard Puyol is back in full training

Mascherano is frankly, playing a level not good enough for us this season. If he was a midfielder of forward, everyone would be screaming to sell him.

As is our desperation, not only can we not really afford to sell him, or even think about selling him...he starts nearly every game!!

I hope Tito taking him off for Bartra (he could of taken off the just back to fitness Pique) is a sign that not only is Bartra going to get more minutes, but Tito sees how bad Mascherano is costing us and he is willing to drop him.

Mascherano def needs some bench time.

Yea I also took that as a sign that Tito is looking at dropping Mash for Barta going forward until Puyol is back to full fitness.

I honestly wouldn't be too upset if we sold Mascherano (I would say Song but we just got him) for a real defender to be the replacement for Puyol going forward.

Same with Alexis. I see him and Villa being gone in the summer and the club going for Neymar and promoting Deulofeu as replacements

I see Mascherano being the future Keita to be honest, he has a great personality.
Although I do see Tello or Cuenca sold + Villa + possibly Sanchez to make space for Gerard and Neymar.

I said this about Masch before the game... Bartra should be getting a start soon because Mascherano's level has not been acceptable.

Our most consistent player. Consistently makes mistakes.

Ridiculous game really. Messi wasn't on his game at all today... Too many loose balls and bad linkup play imo. Good skill to get past the defence for the first but the keeper is at fault for that. A routine save imo though not sure Valdes would have saved it considering the amount of mistakes he has made thus far...
Fabregas didn't have a great game either. Passing was sloppy, didn't make himself available and his first touch always was quite poor. Needs to put in a couple of more consistent performances to get that starting place and his performance today didn't prove his worth in this starting team...
Pique had a good comeback game. Made some good sliding tackles, good build up play, good in the air. Pretty much did everything right. However his partner next to him wasn't great and really hasn't been great for some time. Positioning wasn't great and his mistake at the back could have costed us...
Alves had a sound game though his crosses could have been better...

Next game, Im hoping for a Barta-Pique centreback partnership. Sick of Mascherano and after the international break, he will be tired...

Don't exagerate about Valdes not saving that. Valdes has not made any mistake at this level.

I don't think Messi had a bad game, he was ok.

Have to compliment Alexis, did a fine job in his 30 minutes in the pitch, and did well staying on his feet on the Aouate challenge instead of diving.

Tello deserves and has earned better than he's gotten, IMHO...Credit to The Bullet for showing dedication and focus even when his minutes are sparse

He's a real asset and should be a regular rotation player

Tello the flash will come good guys. Mark my words . He'll need to get more unpredictable though. As it stands he is a bit of a one trick player

Alexis needs to learn to defend. He works hard to pressure the opposition and track back but almost to no avail. Pedro and Tello pressure much better tactically, know when and where to pressure while a lot of times Sánchez looks like headless chicken (dí Maria anyone?). But he's been looking much better when he plays more centrally and made a couple of very good runs behind the defence again. He looks for Messi a bit too much though, like a lot of Barcelona players actually. For example that goal, he could have, and should have scored that himself instead of passing it to Messi because he was in a much better position and one on one with the keeper if he'd turned towards the goal.

Mascherano was okay. People forget he does well for the majority of the match, he does about one mistake every match but they have always ended up being costly for Barcelona. I think the issue is his concentration and Barcelona need someone who leads the defence in absence of Puyol. This will be an ongoing issue, regardless of having a new centre back coming. Someone needs to take charge of that backline.

Mascherano will get better when Puyol gets back and he gets the rest he needs. Mascherano isn't the problem, the problem is that defensive lineup chances constantly and they can't get into sync, and with being played too much it just worsens it.

Usually all defenders get better when Puyol gets back. People underestimate the power of leadership, especially in defence. Look how Mourinho won the Champions League with a bunch of scrubs at Inter just because they had a fantastic leadership in Walter Samuel in defence.

Tello has impressed me in his minutes this season. I liked him last season as something different, but wasn't too impressed. This season he's been pretty good with the minutes given to him. I'd really like to keep Tello, the difference between him and other Barca players is an asset to be used.

He is a bit of a one trick pony- but it works. What he needs to learn now is to effectively cut inside towards the middle like Messi. His one trick tends to be that burst of pace with the inside of his right foot, going past the inside of the defender (it would look like that burst of pace relatively parallel with the sideline). Well, over time you can see defenders position themselves more and more expecting that- if he can learn to exploit that extra space and be able to cut in and take a shot like Messi has done so many times, he's a force to be reckoned with. In fact, this is how his goal against Mallorca came about.

Sanchez impressed me in his 30 minutes, however it seems he can't be consistently like that, which is unfortunate.

danyjr wrote:Alexis needs to learn to defend. He works hard to pressure the opposition and track back but almost to no avail. Pedro and Tello pressure much better tactically, know when and where to pressure while a lot of times Sánchez looks like headless chicken (dí Maria anyone?). But he's been looking much better when he plays more centrally and made a couple of very good runs behind the defence again. He looks for Messi a bit too much though, like a lot of Barcelona players actually. For example that goal, he could have, and should have scored that himself instead of passing it to Messi because he was in a much better position and one on one with the keeper if he'd turned towards the goal.

Mascherano was okay. People forget he does well for the majority of the match, he does about one mistake every match but they have always ended up being costly for Barcelona. I think the issue is his concentration and Barcelona need someone who leads the defence in absence of Puyol. This will be an ongoing issue, regardless of having a new centre back coming. Someone needs to take charge of that backline.

i don know how on earth he thought of passing it messi, 99% of players take the chance themselves. Infact he was passing it from the best position to nearly worst position(look at the number of players circling around messi). just because it was messi, it ended up in the net......