Gerardo 'Tata' Martino

I don't believe for a second he thinks this team is complete. It was just a set phrase. He has said that shortly after his arrival because he was probably told by the board that they don't have the money to invest much more after Nerman. Neither did he have the time to analyse the squad so quickly to make huge demands.

Once again, changing the Barcelona style to the better is not as easy as implementing some pass and move over Moyes' dinosaur template. Players dictate tactics. How Barcelona play is already set in stone once Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta and Messi step onto the pitch. You can change minor details. Playing a higher line or sitting deeper, playing Messi as a #10 or letting him roam upfront like a #9, pressing very high or midfield pressing, telling the wingers to come inside or stay wide. But overall you can't change too much in terms of style.

What Martino has changed is obvious IMO. He wants to sit a bit deeper to eliminate space behind our slow defense and midfield to prevent counterattacks. In return, once we sit deeper and start pressing a bit later and not around the edge of the opponent's box it gives us space for counterattacks once we win the ball back. If I'm not mistaken we are the team that has scored the most amount of counterattacking goals in Europe so far. Messi's penalty against City a fine example of that 1 pass direct move. Or this:



Of course it has its disadvantages. When we sit deeper and don't cut out the danger as soon as possible our midfield and defense is too weak defensively. We are also too weak to win second balls. So we chase the ball. I believe Martino would prefer a combative midfielder, a proper centerback and a #9 to make this style work. But, yeah. He doesn't have any of that to make this function to its fullest yet.

I think he will resign at the end of the season by the way. I don't think he will get the players he needs. Nor do the current crop seem to like what he wants to do. They just want to play tiki-taka until death.

Well something is not working the way it should. Martino has had enough time to shape the team to his liking with small tweaks to be made by the end, but honestly, I think this team has no identity. It is not bad to change the game at times to disrupt/surprise the opponents, but it does not seam that the team are changing the game to that purpose. It appears more as if we have no clue and try random things. I mean one match we play perfect and the next two it is a catastrophe.

I am not sure if it is Martino's fault or the lack of motivation by the players. I guess it is more the second but Martino shares a responsibility. I mean if he noticed that some players do not give 100% he should have benched them even though they might be Pique or Messi. If he can't do that, than he should not coach. I don't blame him for the signings. Nerman was already to be signed and drain our resources, so he probably had no say in that.

What I don't like is that he doesn't seem to trust Xavi and Iniesta to play together in the normal 4-3-3 without Fabregas. It's really annoying because it clearly produces the best and most fluid football reminiscent to Pepcelona (Real Sociedad 4-1, Milan 3-1). Yet this combination has barely played together this season. It's either Xavi-Cesc or Cesc-Iniesta or all 3 of them together with Iniesta on the wing.

Nerman Messi Alexis/Pedro
Iniesta Xavi
Busquets
Alba Masche Bartra Alves
VV

Just do it, fss.

Its Tata's fault, says Tata.. for the loss v Sociedad

Interior should be translated to center midfielder and not inside forward btw. Great work as always

Bartomeu: "We WANT Tata to continue in Barcelona next season."”

Mr Nick09 wrote:Bartomeu: "We WANT Tata to continue in Barcelona next season."”

If he stays he's gonna get better for sure. He is managing for the 1st time in Europe , he's still in a learning process.

Bénin wrote:

Mr Nick09 wrote:Bartomeu: "We WANT Tata to continue in Barcelona next season."”

If he stays he's gonna get better for sure. He is managing for the 1st time in Europe , he's still in a learning process.

Judging by the team's progression, that's far from the logical conclusion.
We are going downhill instead of improving. The longer Tata is on board, the worse we do.

So the rumors are intensifying that he's leaving the club and could be replaced by Del Bosque, De Boer, & Luis Enrique. (No Valverde )

Then again the rumor machine said the same thing in like November.

Del Bosque? LOL

BarrileteCosmico wrote:So the rumors are intensifying that he's leaving the club and could be replaced by Del Bosque, De Boer, & Luis Enrique. (No Valverde )

Then again the rumor machine said the same thing in like November.

The next manager will be the 4th since Guardiola's departure...already

Sacking Tata would be the dumbest thing.

our team is not losing because of strategies, Tata already changed his original gameplan to suit the style of Barcelona and Xavi

The players :

a) lack hunger against smaller teams
b) are focused solely on World Cup / national teams.

I think he needs two years minimum to figure out the team, the way he has handled City was great, all the big teams we have faced so far with Tata have been either ties or wins.
The few things he could work on is his rotation policy, I mean it was very much needed especially when you look back at last season but sometimes you cannot rest your star players against teams like Real Sociedad away from home.

I don't want to see this team turn into Chelsea, losing a manager a year if not more.

I think he should probably stay, but grow balls and bench Piques of the team.

bench Pique for who though.. Bartra (maybe in the future he will be) isn't exactly the biggest improvement nor is Puyol.
maybe if we had a real CB to rotate.

I can't ignore how this team has failed to progress a whole lot since the beginning of the season. I think Tata has dealt with some challenges well (Messi's injuries, for example), but since the team has gotten to be full strength, or very near it...we've failed to see anything more grand. Even throughout the season, I've not seen a whole lot of progression.

Now I still wait until the end of the season to pass judgement, but at this point in time...if I'm honest, it doesn't bother me a whole lot if Tata goes. Though I'm not sure exactly if I would protest his staying, either. Really, I have to wait until the end of the season is I guess what I'm saying

Donuts wrote:bench Pique for who though.. Bartra (maybe in the future he will be) isn't exactly the biggest improvement nor is Puyol.
maybe if we had a real CB to rotate.

Well the way i see ti the worst problem this team has is attitude, and Pique is the one with plenty of bad attitude. I bet if he gets benched couple of games and Bartra plays, we will see a much better Pique. Same goes for Messi, Alba and Bussi at times. All these guys IMHO seamed not to care on certain games. Next game or two, bench the shit out of them. I do not care if they are saving themselves for WC. If you get benched enough, you might not cut for WC team, or might not be at the best form.

I am confused about Tata.On the one hand,he has lost us the league(at one point we were 6 ahead and now trail by 4) and struggle against scrubs.On the other hand we win the big games.Tata has come out on top in pretty much all our big games this season.
Stark contrast to last season when we beat all the scrubs but lost every big game.

I would wait until the end of the season to decide on Tata.

Have we really lost against scrubs, though?

We've lost 5 matches this season:

Ajax 2 - 1 Barca
Athletic 1 - 0 Barca
Barcelona 2 - 3 Valencia
Real Sociedad 3 - 1 Barca
Real Valladolid 1 - 0 Barca

Only Valladolid are scrubs. And we lost because the team looked ridiculously tired, most probably due to the fact that international friendlies were played three days before, including long-distance flights like the brazilian squad to South Africa. The rest are matches we should have won, but were by no means assured.

It's also a bit of a stretch to blame everything on Tata. Real Sociedad can be blamed on him with that strange lineup (even then the individuals on the pitch could have played a lot better, see Adriano not tracking his man at all). But Valladolid? It was essentially the same team that played yesterday, except Iniesta in for Pedro. Did Tata go from being completely inept against La Liga relegation fodder to outsmarting the most dangerous attacking team in England within 3 days? Same with Valencia. The first half an hour or so it was a miracle that Valencia didn't go 0-5 down. After their goal Barca completely collapsed. Why? Surely not tactics.

I still believe we can play better possession football and higher up the pitch instead of this more direct play where we look more dangerous on the break than we do through combinational play in the final quarter (or maybe I'm wrong and we can't without prime Xavi). But in principle his system seems to work and would probably work even better if he could make defensive / midfield transfers and Nerman gets back into form. I would be against hiring a new coach and starting to implement a new system yet again. Unless he fails badly in the CdR final and / or the Champions League after collapsing in the league as well.

True, but that is unlikely to happen. Last season we collapsed at the end because all the players lacked fitness. The entire point of Martino's season plan was to ensure that all the best players would be fit by this point in the season. And yesterday they all put a ridiculous amount of work into the pitch. It's working. And now with February behind us and no more FIFA breaks it's unlikely that our fitness level will drop again, barring unsuspecting injuries. We still could lose, but if we do I don't think it will be by large margins and they would be more even games.

Also agreed that Tata is not solely responsible for our losses (or our victories). He's the one that is going to get the axe regarding team performance, and perhaps he could be a better motivator, but it's not like he has often committed tactical screw ups (Ajax and Sociedad perhaps, the rest not so much). If Messi, Iniesta, Cesc and Xavi refuse to put in their fair share of work is that really Tata's fault? Pep couldn't fix it in his last season, Tito couldn't do it either.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:True, but that is unlikely to happen. Last season we collapsed at the end because all the players lacked fitness. The entire point of Martino's season plan was to ensure that all the best players would be fit by this point in the season. And yesterday they all put a ridiculous amount of work into the pitch. It's working. And now with February behind us and no more FIFA breaks it's unlikely that our fitness level will drop again, barring unsuspecting injuries. We still could lose, but if we do I don't think it will be by large margins and they would be more even games.

Also agreed that Tata is not solely responsible for our losses (or our victories). He's the one that is going to get the axe regarding team performance, and perhaps he could be a better motivator, but it's not like he has often committed tactical screw ups (Ajax and Sociedad perhaps, the rest not so much). If Messi, Iniesta, Cesc and Xavi refuse to put in their fair share of work is that really Tata's fault? Pep couldn't fix it in his last season, Tito couldn't do it either.

Its on him if we dont beat scrubs.Its his job to motivate the team and bench slackers.
Also dont see why you lump Xavi,Iniesta and Cesc in with Messi regarding putting in a shift.Especially Xavi.The guy is as great a competitor as it gets and always gives his all for the shirt.Unlike Messi who 90 % of the games these days puts in a slack effort.
Same with Iniesta and Cesc.You can never criticize them for effort.I dont like Cesc but I have to admit that he always puts in the effort.You can never criticize him for lack of effort.

Good discussions and I agree. This is more being more sensible. The teams could do better but its far from terrible and I think overall we did quite well this season. I'll decide about Tata end of season. But mostly I think hes done ok. Subbing Messi so he could rest, I've never seen Tito and Pep do that, I think thats a good thing. Hes been rotating Xavi and others as much as he can too which is both resting and keeping everyone happ yI think, not an easy job.

A few strange things about Iniesta not starting many games, sometimes subs during games to change things if not working can be better, and fixing up that defense and just keeping everyone at their best. Those are the things that could be better apart from that I wouldnt ask too him.

I think Real having a great reason under Ancelotti and Atletico doing so well also puts pressure on us and may contribute making fans unhappy.

alexjanosik wrote:Its on him if we dont beat scrubs.Its his job to motivate the team and bench slackers.
Also dont see why you lump Xavi,Iniesta and Cesc in with Messi regarding putting in a shift.Especially Xavi.The guy is as great a competitor as it gets and always gives his all for the shirt.Unlike Messi who 90 % of the games these days puts in a slack effort.
Same with Iniesta and Cesc.You can never criticize them for effort.I dont like Cesc but I have to admit that he always puts in the effort.You can never criticize him for lack of effort.

Don't really disagree with the first part, all I'm saying is that players have some responsibility too.

On the second part last season during the self-management era many players of the squad were not putting their best effort, not just Messi. Iniesta and Xavi didn't 'walk' matches but didn't press anywhere near as much as they should have as well. Alves publicly stated that he didn't take as good care of himself without Tito, which lead to injuries, etc.

Bartomeu (president): "Tata Martino has a contract until 2015 and he told us he plans to continue next season."

Can we rename the thread to "the GOAT" instead of "the gamble"? 2 out of 2 Clasico victories. Last time this happened was 4 seasons ago when Mehdrid had Lady Gago marshalling their midfield.

2/2 City.
2/2 Mehdrid.

DAT big game coach.

Can't wait to see his tactics unfold to its fullest potential once Neyflop fully adapts and we finally get a centerback.

Suddenly games vs. Atletico Madrid (0/3), Milan (1/2), Real Sociedad (2/4) or Valencia (1/2), aren't big games anymore. Only when it interets our kneejerk friend.

Since when is a game against Valencia a big game? They are 8th in La Liga. Milan over 2 legs was beaten 4-2. Atletico Madrid over 2 legs was beaten on goal difference and we ended up with the trophy (I don't count those games anyway, those were his very first games). Maybe Real Sociedad can be considered a big game and he got his tactics wrong in that one. Happens. That stadium is cursed for us anyway. Pep and Tito both never won there.