Dembélé injury was bad for the form and Craperto coming back was the nail in the coffin for the excellent form.
On the + side, Coutinho looked real sharp. Drew a PK and could've had more contributions towards goals but for bad finishing by others.
Suarez looked awful. He fumbled two chances and tried to switch legs on another one and shot a weak ball at the keeper. This guy has looked awful on the pitch lately. Let's start Dembele and Coutinho @Lyon. By the way, when the goalie saved Messi's follow up header after the PK, it looked like he was inside the goal. Either way, Messi didn't have his best game but he could have had a few assists in the second half with better finishing. All in all this performance was rough but it wasn't that bad. Valladolid had 8+ men behind the ball seemingly the entire game. And yet still, we could have won this one 5-0 if we converted better. I'm scared of Lyon though cuz they are much better than Valladolid. They are IMO more dangerous than Roma was last year.
That pass to Suarez you allude to was behind him. What's he supposed to do with that? Literally nobody would finish that chance. Also Yashin-like save on the 1-on-1. Let's calm down a bit.
Why the animosity? I put Barca before Liverpool everytime ... I live in England and they play like we used to ..
I think you’re referring to the one where he had a shot with his left foot and then switch to the right foot and a goalie saved it on the bottom right corner. Yeah, he messed that one up.
We got 3 points to go up 7 points (over Atleti who played before us, 9 over Real Madrid who play tomorrow), no one was injured, only Messi was carded (yellow), we got some bad shots out of our system including a PK miss. A 4th draw in a row would be bad, a loss worse, a win where we look like crap and only score from a PK is bad, sure, but we got the 3 points, we rested many players who will start against Lyon for at least part of the game (Semedo, Lenglet, Busi, Raki, Suarez). But bottom line we got 3 points (after a run of 3 draws in a row). I do understand that this bad / unconvincing game came on the heels of EV being confirmed for renewal, so the EV haters are especially alarmed by this game, but it's OK. The result was good, as Pique said, Barcelona defender Gerard Pique: "The only good news is the win, we have not played well. It's important to keep picking up the three points, but we have not played well and the feelings on the pitch were not positive. "We struggled against them, we were not moving the ball quick enough and if not we suffer." Good game by Suarez, hardly, but look at this: CLASIFICACIÓN PICHICHI Lionel Messi (Barça) 22 Luís Suárez (Barça) 15 Cristhian Stuani (Girona) 12 Antoine Griezmann (Atlético) 12 Charles Días (Éibar) 12 Wissam Ben Yedder (Sevilla) 11 Iago Aspas (Celta) 10 Karim Benzema (Real Madrid) 10 Borja Iglesias (Espanyol) 10 Jaime Mata (Getafe) 9 Maxi Gómez (Celta) 9 Roger Martí (Levante) 9 André Silva (Sevilla) 9 Raúl de Tomás (Rayo) 9 Jorge Molina (Getafe) 9 Willian José (Real Sociedad) 9 Ousmane Dembélé (Barça) 8 José Luís Morales (Levante) 8 Pablo Sarabia (Sevilla) 8 Youssef En-Nesyri (Leganés) 8 Mikel Oyarzabal (Real Sociedad) 8 Iñaki Williams (Athletic) 7 Íker Muniaín (Athletic) 6 Dani Parejo (Valencia) 6 Sergio Canales (Betis) 6 Gareth Bale (Real Madrid) 6 Sergio Ramos (Real Madrid) 6 Guido Carrillo (Leganés) 5 Ángel Rodríguez (Getafe) 5 Sergi Enrich (Éibar) 5 Brais Méndez (Celta) 5 Lastly, who cares if Prince or Murillo don't look like Barca quality, they were emergency cheap LOAN options, we spent almost nothing to borrow them in case of bad injury to Luis, or Gerard, or all of the Left footed CBs at the same time. If people thought Prince was supposed to be Luis's replacement well, and if you think Luis is crap because of a game like this, refer to Pichichi chart, how many times does the 2nd leading scorer play next to the first leading scorer (and never get to take PKs or FKs)?
Barca has needed a decent replacement for Suarez 1-2 seasons, a proper center forward striker, not Malcom, Coutinho, Munir, Dembélé or Prince. Hope this summer they get one instead of emergency loans.
To be fair, this doesn't show much because Ronaldo himself has also been in pretty rough form in the league for months at a time. Suarez at this point has 3-4 bad games for every good game. He is slow especially with his feet and just seems off. Maybe it's injuries but he hasn't looked good. And understat.com shows he's been scoring well under his expected goals tally. That's never a good sign for a striker. He should have the same number of goals as Messi right now if he's was converting well.
Yea... Since the beginning of the 16-17 CL campaign, Suarez has 4 goals in 23 appearances and 2 of those goals came in a 7-0 drubbing of Celtics in Sep 2016. He hasn't been bad. He's been non-existent. Honestly I think if it wasn't for his Clasico hat trick giving fans some pause, there would be cries to sell Suarez right now. I appreciate what he's done for the club but he's hurting us right now.
Still nobody has scored more in La Liga than Suarez this past season and-a-half, other than Messi. Plus he contributes in other ways, like creating the penalty yesterday. He's the least of our worries.