Pep v Mou, now outsourced: The Other Teams' Problems, err Thread [R]

That reminds me of the Real Madrid forum. One of them uses one of those as their username, and their forum's favorite name for Messi is down there as well.

 

Usually fans that lift their expectations to the absolute maximum (expecting to win CL every other year) even when it's unrealistic. I searched up on your posting history and your post prior to May (when we lost 7-0 to Bayern) was back in 2006, arguably when the golden era had started for these players. Now I don't know for sure, but being gone for the entire time we as a club were successful only to come back once we lose heavily in a CL semifinal sounds like you're just back to complain about what the club is doing wrong and set our expectations for us (fans don't set the expectations) and being completely quiet while we were winning, that sure sounds like someone who wants to just complain about the bad and stay quiet during the good. I'm not going to say you're a gloryhunter, but some of these things sure do kind of add up to make someone's opinion of you seem like you are one, you know?

It has to do with everything because you're making unrealistic expectations of winning the Champions League every season even though it's been said quite a few times now that it's impossible to win it all the time because of the factors that come into play that need to fall in your hands to win it. No one has retained the title of European champions since 1989 and that speaks volumes of how hard it is to achieve it. And you want to say that we should win the Champions League 10 years in a row, something that's never been done and will highly probably never be done. Ever.

I'm not saying we should be content with the past (that's the Madrid way, man) but we shouldn't cry about wholesale changes to our philosophy and approach like you are suggesting. Every one here has been fairly reasonable on what we need to make that step back to the top again by suggesting a top centerback and perhaps a Plan B forward like Larsson, some fair assumptions as those are two key things that we lack in the squad right now and probably need to improve without stagnating any further. You, however, are criticizing tiki-taka as being boring and saying that we should change our playing style. You do realize this:

Barcelona - Current Spanish champions, Qualified for the CL semifinals 6 years in a row
Spain - Current World and European champions

These things were completely achieved through tiki-taka and they still bear truth today because they are facts. So why on Earth would Barcelona want to change the entire system when these current players have achieved all that success and still hold these titles in their hands right now? We lost 3-4 key games last season that cost us a pair of cup titles, but we had our best league campaign of all time and have kept our run of consistently being one of the top four teams in Europe by making it to the CL semifinals for the 6th year in a row (not even Real Madrid of the 5 Euro Cups did this), something that's never been done before which underlines the consistency and hunger of this team to succeed at such a high level year after year. And you want to change the entire system for which our success is based on? I could understand this if we had an 07/08 or 02/03 type of season, but after just one bad semifinal in which nothing went right and we lost to the best team in Europe last season? Come on man.

I agree that we need those two upgrades and they would be very useful for us to climb back to where we were under Pep, but are you telling me that even if we had those two things that the outcome would have changed against Bayern? And I completely disagree that, under equal terms, we would have had absolutely no chance against Bayern. We played with a half fit Messi, an inexperienced Bartra, and Busquets who had injections prior to the game at the Allianz. Then you forget to factor in that Dante probably fouled Alves on the first goal, Gomez's second goal was just offside, and Robben's third goal should have been ruled out for Muller's pick on Alba. So not only were we outplayed and having things favored against us in terms of squad selection, we also had no luck on the big decisions that decided the tilt of the match. Then in the second leg we missed plenty of players. No Messi, no Busquets, no Abidal, no Puyol, no Mascherano, and no Alba, on top of chasing a 4-0 deficit from the first leg. We had to play the game with an out of form Pedro, Cesc, and Villa up top to try and pull some goals back against the best defense in Europe. The outcome wasn't too surprising even if the fight was not good enough. I didn't even mention the most important reason for why our season didn't go as smoothly as it looked to be on the way to being so at halfway stage: Tito being diagnosed with cancer and having to leave the team for three months which caused a big downfall because he was gone and because Roura didn't rotate enough while he was out.

I've already said enough on this matter above but also remember that we were looking as strong as we have been in years in the first half of the season when Tito was still healthy. We won 18 out of 19 league games which is a record for a major European league and will probably remain one for a very very long time. We'd have fared much better against Bayern if we faced them in October/November when we peaked (which is why CL is such a gamble because you have to peak at the tailend of the season). How we looked in the second half of last season was hard to judge when you consider the state that our head coach was in, but now we have a fresh new guy who's not from the club and will implement his own ideas to ensure we don't stagnate whilst continuing with the base and the philosophy of tiki-taka.

 

Hope Neymar proves them wrong about him being only good on youtube

 

I am guessing the gotze remark is that he's a glory hunter? It just goes along with the winners?

If so pretty funny

 

and Wenger trying to sign that young zombie .

Come to think of it ... would be hilarious trying to play against a zombie team , the players trying to get the ball while the zombies are trying to get the players brains , now THAT's action for you.