Pep Guardiola

Plus, different roles and positions. Muller's best seasons came off playing centrally. For some reason.

 

Robben started transforming last season but Pep made him the smarter player, easily. He was still doing his one thing exclusively last season and he tracked back. This season we see him making smart runs through the middle and holding the ball up for others in far better positions.

 

I don't think Pep made him a better player individually, but he did a great job at discovering the places where Robben is most dangerous on the pitch. By setting up attacking patterns which suit Robben greatly, he is able to perform closer to his optimum.

 

In other words, Pep made him better.

 

Yeah, you're right about that. The style of almost every player in our team has changed. But I still like his directness more. That was our trumph card. Maybe we will see that more in future since the team isn't there yet.

 

I still think Robben needs to take a few more shots per game, but otherwise he is playing as well as he can at this point.

 

Ribery and Robben need to start overloading a side and switch sides and be generally more unpredictable.

More 1-2s and combination play in the final third.

And please, Toni Kroos quit playing that worthless offset 6. His movement and positioning are horrible as a DM and he just gets in the real #6's way.

Move him back to AM and play Lahm as the lone DM.

 

There can be a difference between making a player better and making a player perform better.

 

Yep. There can be a difference.

Anyway, this isn't unexpected. It's how Pep would treat a player like Robben so when we knew he would stay under Pep, it made sense to think Pep would want more out of him simply because of the way he likes to use wide players.

 

.......

 

Well, I think it's the same old Robben who benefits from getting the ball a lot more in the last third compared to the times under Heynckes where we would build up attacks on the wings further away from goal.

If we want to talk about somebody Guardiola made a better player, then Toni Kroos is probably a much better candidate.

 

I'd say Boateng got even better too. His upward trend started last year, but now I trust him even more back there.

 

Robben has certainly been in great form. I don't think there is a huge difference in his game compared to last season. In fact his running, and movement in the final third is ideal for a Pep team. He loves to make those diagonal runs in between the lb and CB in order to beat the offside trap. His runs are perfect for that Barca chip that we see from Thiago and occasionally Kroos.

 

Andrea Pirlo: the night Pep Guardiola tried to sign me for Barcelona

So who is the next Pirlo for Pep to sign?

 

It's a fragment from Pirlo's book.

 

Pirlo the poet :S

 

Not really. You can't make some-one better at 30 magically. Besides Robben in his short stint last season or even in 09-10 was as good as this.

Only difference is -

A - No injuries. No disrupting his rhythm. It's a massive thing which is being under-stated. He does have to fight back to regain fitness, form and then his starting spot every few months.

B - Pep trusts him as a player. Jupp never did. With Jupp you knew Kroos was his son and with a section of the German media raising a huge hue and cry against Robben and Jupp's old Conventional german thinking, Robben was always the odd one out, he would always loose those 50-50 decisions against Muller or Kroos.

With Pep, he is literally guaranteed to start. Pep knows how good he is and trusts him completely. Despite the PK incident , Robben's abilities have never been clouded by such stuff. Jupp would probably have benched him with those incident.

C - The team is overall better. You don't have Kroos a tortoise with the turning radius of a tank play CAM because he was Jupp's son.
You have technically skilled players like Goetze and Thiago coming in. Mandzu is also trying to link up. Kroos at CM is beasting. The whole players are not play to feed Gomez. The team is not based on technically poor players like Tymo, Gustavo, etc.

 

It was your problem. I heard this a lot and I laughed at how stupid this was. Maybe its because I had vision but Kroos was always going to be a CM and Muller with his technically average skills was never going to the False 9 - Messi like of Bayern.

Robben is a dream Guardiola player. He was always fantastic in possession anyway so I don't know where this notion arose that he won't fit. I always found it very stupid that just because Pep developed a passing game means he would hate players who can shoot well from a distance. You don't win games without scoring and any half a brain coach including Pep would understand that. That is why Messi, Villa and a lot of Barca players were allowed to shoot from distance.

I think I got most things right bar the Lahm at DM which presently surprised me as I never thought Pep will abandon the Lahm + Robben combo. Also I was surprised Pep did not try Robben as a False 9 as he was absolutely cut out for the role and would have even better that at RW.

 

I really need a result next week. I'm a crazy fan, so I will shift opinions. The stuff I have read over the past 2 days is not good. If we tiki-taka 90 minutes away without coming close to scoring and the game ends 0-0 it's going to be very difficult for me to not start feeling some mild PEP RAUS feelings.