Valencia VS Barcelona

La Liga is back in action this weekend as FC Barcelona travel to Valencia on Saturday for a game at Mestalla Stadium. The last match these two teams played was during Barça’s awful April. Valencia walked off Camp Nou as winners with the result 2-1.

Barça have come back excellently from the international break with two 4-0 wins, the latest being yesterday at Camp Nou against Manchester City. Barça will hopefully look to continue this current form. Though they already suffered 3 losses home at Mestalla, Valencia seem to have kickstarted their season with newly appointed coach Voro González. They have 3 wins in 4 matches with him.


Recent form

Barcelona last match:

Starting XI: ter Stegen – Alba (Digne 10’), Umtiti, Pique (Mathieu 39’), Mascherano – Iniesta (Gomes 80’), Busquets, Rakitic – Neymar, Suarez, Messi

Result: 4-0 win, goals by Messi (17’, 61’, 69’) and Neymar (89’)

Barcelona last 5 matches: W-W-L-W-W



Valencia last match:

Starting XI: Alves – Gaya, Santos, Garay, Montoya – Perez, Suarez – Mina (Bakkali 65’), Parejo, Cancelo – Rodrigo (Medran 93’)

Result: 2-1 win, goals by Suarez (7’, 65’)

Valencia last 5 matches: W-L-W-W-L




preview courtesy of totalbarca.com

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvX_L-XW8AEk5Ay.jpg

Iniesta looks in serious pain

Await update on the injury Well good thing we signed numerous backup players, now Enrique gotta decide his midfield rotation now. We should have enough though, Gomez, Suarez, Turan, Rafinha, etc., cant expect them to do what Iniesta does, but we can adjust, and especially with Messi on fire, I think we should be ok.

"Munir has nothing on paco, a better player"

So me, free and Alex are vindicated. Or does paco need more time still

Rakitic-Busquets-Rafinha should be fine. Rafinha is in great form.


the game was awful though. Valencia are so dirty and so are their 'fans'

Only watched the 1st half. Was the last minute penalty deserved?

Without foul suarez would be 1 on 1. it was deserved. And the reason why D.Alves didnt reach it was because Messi took it with outside of his foot. Great technique

Knee ligament for Iniesta...

Awful news

RealGunner wrote:Knee ligament for Iniesta...

Awful news

it's a partial tear. Not as bad as previously feared according to the commentator.

EDIT:

https://twitter.com/Millar_Colin/status/789855992284667904

He's out for 3-4 months :FACEPALM:

Thats awful. Rafinha, Denis and Gomes need to step up big time!

jibers wrote:

RealGunner wrote:Knee ligament for Iniesta...

Awful news

it's a partial tear. Not as bad as previously feared according to the commentator.

EDIT:

https://twitter.com/Millar_Colin/status/789855992284667904

He's out for 3-4 months :FACEPALM:

I have a lcl knee sprain and i've been sidelined for over a month. I'm sure a tear is much worse.

RealGunner wrote:Knee ligament for Iniesta...

Awful news

that's his career. such a shame.

6-8 weeks official, not bad as feared

The match was so intense, i thought we're gonna lose.

Thrilling game! But if we analyse it the conclusions are worrisome. Our pressing is very bad and disjointed and our positional play non existent. We are disorganized and you can't win titles playing like this.
Also, our signings we're again poor. Gomes was our worst midfielder (even our worst player). He is a huge liability in defense. His pressing is awful, he is slow, can't tackle. He didn't complete a single tackle or interception in 70 minutes.
Umtiti didn't play well either. Mascherano was horrid, awfully positioned all the time because he wants to be where the ball is all the time, instead of doing his job as CB. Alcacer didn't even play while Munir was Valencia's best player in just 45 minutes. Digne was average.
We need to sell some deadwood signed these last two seasons and sign 2-3 footballers that can start for us.
We also need Luis Enrique to start coaching us.

free_cat wrote:Thrilling game! But if we analyse it the conclusions are worrisome. Our pressing is very bad and disjointed and our positional play non existent. We are disorganized and you can't win titles playing like this.
Also, our signings we're again poor. Gomes was our worst midfielder (even our worst player). He is a huge liability in defense. His pressing is awful, he is slow, can't tackle. He didn't complete a single tackle or interception in 70 minutes.
Umtiti didn't play well either. Mascherano was horrid, awfully positioned all the time because he wants to be where the ball is all the time, instead of doing his job as CB. Alcacer didn't even play while Munir was Valencia's best player in just 45 minutes. Digne was average.
We need to sell some deadwood signed these last two seasons and sign 2-3 footballers that can start for us.
We also need Luis Enrique to start coaching us.

It's been like that for most of Enrique's tenure. Only the build up uses a weak form of it. The pressing has been disjointed because Messi does what he wants and the team works to get MSN on the ball. Rakitic moving righ to cover messi etc. MSN can resolve most situations but the position game will be weak. Barcelonas best display of this was against Madrid last year when Messi was on the bench. Only when the team builds from the back is the free man concept adhered to. Most of the tactical situations are resolved by MSNs qualitative superiority over the opposition.

What can Enrique do? We saw what happened when he tried imposing things at the start. He has no power and all the leverage is with the stars.

I agree, but we played much better last season and in the first season after Messi's coup. Messi used to stay most of his time on the right instead of roaming everywhere. Also, our poor pressing and positioning is not only cause of Messi. Neymar and Suarez also play anywhere and when we press we do it by waves instead as a unit. It is not working.

We played really good in first half yesterday IMO. Valencia's approach to the game (leg targeting, overly agressive behaviour) made it impossible to play actual football throughout the entire 90 mins though. The got lucky and scored 2 quick goals at the start of the 2nd half and from then on it was just chaos and a mess in terms of tactics.

I wouldn't read much into this match. We should have buried the game in the first 45 minutes, we did not and things got complicated but we managed to recover. Valencia always causes problems at Mestalla.

fatigue played a huge part in this match, wouldn't look too much into how we played
the ref gave us so many favorable calls but overall he was terrible for both sides.

Harmonica wrote:6-8 weeks official, not bad as feared

Oh, it's not THAT bad then. I been reading up to 4 months. That's relieving

ffs this season is getting trickier and tricker by the day.

ffs back off to Juve section, you damn beelzebub

This is what gambling does to you folks, stay the feck away from it.

I've been leading the Munir is on a similar level of Paco campaign and is a better player for Barca than Paco since day 1. I also claim Munir will blossom to a be at a higher level than Paco will ever reach. Munir can be used in so many more ways, while Paco is a glorified poacher won't ever fit in our system.