Benzema is a prime example here. You don’t just sit. You progress further and improve the team. Two summers of being lazy and sentimental and we’re left with this now. A piss poor league team. I won’t mention the CL. Anything can happen in KO.L rounds but a you’re judged on how well you do over 38 games.
Well every team goes through cycles; we are clearly rebuilding. Remember when we had Gravesen, Gago, Diarra, Cassano, etc.? Now is no different except we have a President who no longer has the balls or urge to spend unless he really wants the player.
We have to read the writing on the wall. As long as Kroos and Modric are on this team, Carlo will never start other midfielders ahead of them. That makes him the wrong person for the job. He isn't going to lead a transition. Either Kroos or Modric will have to not be renewed, or Carlo will have to be let go. I prefer the former because Carlo is still a great manager. He's just not adaptable. He has been figured out by Xavi. A rank amateur manager. It is truly sad. Regardless of how the CL results go, I believe Florentino will line up Carlo's replacement. I prefer Zidane, Klopp or Xabi Alonso. I don't think Raul is ready. I hate to say this, but I'm having a really hard time rationalizing why Carlo keeps going back to the Kroos-Modric-Camavinga midfield despite repeatedly beaten with that midfield. By the time he introduced Ceballos and Tchouameni, it was too late. He keeps repeating the same mistakes.
Another train wreck by Carlo: 1. Why do we continue to play from the back? It literally ends in the same result everytime. I’m shocked we haven’t addressed this in training. Midfield is static in this situation where you need movement. Forwards are too high where you need them back. And we wonder why we end up losing the ball. 2. Kroos is somewhat not useful in these games, particularly when we have our forwards so high. Ceballos, a far better ball carrying midfielder would have been the far better choice. We also ended up wasting Modric because he spent most of his energy chasing the ball rather than what he’s best doing. 3. I get bringing on Tchouameni as fresh legs in the midfield, but I hate taking our your best player in the process. You’re going for a win, why bring in Mendy? Why not stick Cammavinga at LB? 4. Dani is done, the second goal was his fault all over. The fact Vinicius Tobias hasn’t at featured for the first team is a crime, but with the league over, he should be up every remaining game. Let’s see what we have. 5. Fede at RW just doesn’t work here when you’re throwing the ball away and isolating your forwards. Rodrygo 1000% should’ve been a starter. To also come out past two games and try to say we deserved wins, GTFO with that crap. He’s better than that. A few other things: 1. Doubt we’ll hear any punishment for the fans chanting “Vini die” mid game. 2. If Gavi wasn’t Spanish and white he wouldn’t have been playing in the league. Should have had two reda from the persistence of fouls alone, not to mention blatant off ball elbow that should’ve been a straight red.
Time to start rotating more often Carlo. La liga is done and dusted. Fourth and second are the same thing. All CL spots. Focus on the rest of the winnable tournaments. Carlo is saying that the Winter WC had RM struggling since January. That is not true, the seams were unraveling since Late October.
Rewatched the 2nd goal a few times. 1.Dani was struggling to track back. This allowed Lewa to isolate Militao and pull off the backheel. Militao did his best to recover. 2. Not sure why Rudiger did not shift over faster when he saw Militao was beaten or saw that Dani was out of position. He needed to do better there. 3. Tchoumeni should have closed that passing lane better and had he tried could have dove and blocked the pass - possibly? 4. Mendy was out to lunch. Shouldn’t have been so deep and left the ONLY player at the 18, Kessie wide open. Sunday league defending. Apart from Militao, all 3 of those are culpable.
Gavi can pull out a katana and impale a Madrid player on the pitch. The referee would give him a "stern warning". It disgusts me how much the c***suckers at RFEF is biasing in favor of this kid and his scummy team. The corruption runs deep.
This. They have a tactical identity on the field which we have clearly lacked. Every time we attacked, they outnumbered us by at least 2-3 players. Every time they attacked their players were flush with options. We were lucky Lewa had an off-day finishing.
This Vini situation is concerning. There seems to be a concentrated effort by other teams fans to bully him into leaving La Liga. And I could see that happening if more is not done to protect him. Are they that afraid of him?
All very solid points. WRT Spanish players, I've been thinking about that, IMO it is also a factor in the decisions.
I’m tired of hearing this excuse, we’ve been “rebuilding” since 2017. This just isn’t good enough, sorry. And everyone knew it over the summer. Played off the pitch for long stretches of the game by an extremely average Barca team. We made them look like their 2009 edition.
They've got our number, that's a fact. That doesn't mean we're rebuilding, this is still double winner vs Europa League drop out, but they are trending upwards while we are hitting a slump.
We are stuck with stadium work and cost overrun that's impacting our transfer plan that clearly show something is not right with our stadium plan Unless some one independently investigates we would never know the truth and how deep is the hole
We've signed the youngest players from all teams across all major leagues in europe. This is so stupid to think we're not spending money on transfers.
The criticism i see from press and journalists a lot is that we cart out Courtois for press and interviews while the captains rarely give statements. It's guys like Nacho and Tibo that do a lot of press work. They are excellent with the words, but press wants to speak to other guys as well.
Agreed...and that's the point. Dude gave us everything....no much left in the tank. We're asking too much of him.
When Mendy came on I knew he would let a barca player ghost him at least once for a significant chance. I seriously don't know why we still use him. He is a significant liability. Also Benzema is basically finished. The same for Kroos and Carvajal. These guys can't give more than one performance in like a month. Vinicius was doing all the running and trying to set Benzema up and he wasn't ever on time, in position or flat out couldn't finish.
Many have pointed out that this team lacks cohesion in the most important areas: offense and defense. It doesn't seem Carlo has an answer to how Xavi is playing his team. He had 3 games this season alone to answer and failed in all 3. The first La Liga game is long in the rearview mirror. Florentino and the board need to speak with Carlo and figure out what is needed to win going forward. If Carlo rolls out the "We're playing great" nonsense, it's time to find a different answer. Personnel is an issue. But this team has beaten Barca repeatedly prior to Carlo with less.