This evening at 8 pm bt,
Barcelona plays the 23rd game of the league against Betis Sevilla.
Barcelona plays the 23rd game of the league against Betis Sevilla.
Betis squad list:
Ricardo, Casto, Melli, Fernando Vega, Juanito, Ilic, Juanma, Sergio García, Monzón, Pavone, Ricardo Oliveira, Rivera, Emaná, Mehmet Aurelio, Lima, Mark González, Juande, Alex Ortiz, Isidoro
Barcelona squad list:
Valdés, Pinto, Alves, Piqué, Márquez, Cáceres, Abidal, Sylvinho, Xavi, Touré, Busquets, Keita, Gudjohnsen, Messi, Eto'o, Bojan, Henry, Iniesta, Hleb
!!! LIVE MATCH CHAT !!!
From two hours before until two hours after the game you can join a match chat (read more here)
Before (what are your expectations, what's your prediction, what should be the line-up,...), during and after the match, you can also comment on the game here.
Posts
20 comments:
Barcelona game after an international is always a tricky one.
Watch out the counters thru the spaces we have 1)between the ofense and defense where we usually have one man to cover Yaya/Busq, and the space between Valdes and our high defense specially with the absence of Puyol, Pique+Marquez=slow for counters with pace.
Enjoy the game.
yeah but about other clubs? they have the same problem and they're not playing with the B-team.
I'm wondering if Pep would let the first team play in the champions league finals...
Hmm, that was a shaky game but gotta say Betis played extremly well. Thank Eto'o for the double. I was really impressed by Emana. Mb we should sign him next summer.
No we should not sign him, etoto. We should start paying attention on set piece situations instead! This was a totally unacceptable pointloss. Totally unaccaptable!
Now, Real Madrid, which is on a big roll, has the chance to gain some hope and traction going into the spring. So unnecessary. There was too much rotations for this match as well, we all know that some asses are tired after mid-week, but still, there was not enough continuity in that line-up and we suffered as a result. This is the truth, etoto.
it was a good comeback
can't say im happy but im also not upset cuz most teams give up after conceding 2 quick goals but we didn't.
ramzi useally analieses the match but i'll give it a shot:
1- the defense lacks a leader, when puyol and marquez are not there cuz their positioning was awful.
2- i think guardiola was affected by the messi dependancy talk so dedecided to give hleb a shot to build his confidence .
3- playing 4 forwards hurt messi's preformance cuz he couldn't go to the right wing because of bojan.
4- xavi dwelled on the ball a lot
5- eto'o , alves and andres were great
i meant valdes not alves.
I honestly don't know what Pep was thinking not starting with 2/3s of his goal scorers. Betis didn't have a tough job with only Eto'o as forward. If Henry and Messi weren't fit to start he should have started Bojan with Eto'o.
Another point to make is Busquets was the one with most responsibility for both goals. He didn't put any pressure on Melli for the first goal. For the second it was poor defending from him and Dani Alves both leaving Gonzalez wide open.
Hleb was ineffective at all. It's just so obvious the difference in class between him and the likes of Iniesta. I think he will be sold in the summer, he should.
In the end, I believe we would've won the game if it wasn't for the amazing Betis keeper.
Let's just hope Real Madrid slip up tomorrow. x fingers crossed x
really we played very well, except of course the defense which im furious about... totally unprofessional marking!
1. Pique and Busquets disappointed me, with the lack of Toure on field they were the highest player yet each lob found a Betis head
2. beside that Pique was good, i think he marked Oliviera very well but should be more careful with his body work.
3. Busquets had a tough role, without Toure he was in charge of the defensive part of the midfield and with Keita pushing up and giving basically no help, he really struggled and wasn't dominant enough (unlike the Gijon game last week)
4. im gonna use some harsh words but:
WHY THE FUCK DID HENRY REPLACE INIESTA ON THE LEFT FLANK?! he totally owned Ilic and overall he terrorized the right side of Betis' defense and Henry wasnt really effective there, nor was Iniesta as a central midfielder.
oh yeah.. and Ricardo was amazing... but its no excuse for the missed chance Eto'o had created himself...
does someone know what was Eto'o screamig to Guardiola?
My five cents-added to the guys opinions above:
Valdes is the Man. But the Portuguese is a Superman!
Dont start saying harsh things about Pep and co :)
now to some remarks, while I am sure you guys will mention what I may miss.
1) Its a barcelona tradition to have it hard after international break. The guys were tired. is it an excuse or not, thats another story, but they were tired.
2)I scheduled an article to write in the first week of march, its actually about February impact last season because thats exactly when the team collapsed. I was going to write it just to add suspension to the league because I don't see it happening this season. But now this damn result changed my plans! It will not be funny any more lol
3) My first impression about the selection was positive by the way, but I didn't expect we are going to play the same 4-3-3. I said it before and I say it now, in the absence of Messi its better to change the system a little. Now that both Messi and henry were out, I was imagining a different plan when I saw the selection, I was wrong.
3)Henry and Messi were not able to play 90 minutes, thats understandable. but I would have preferred if henry played the first half and messi played the second, so we always find another man to cause damage beside eto'o. And one interesting assumption was starting Bojan. I expected also that he will end up taking of eto'o and getting in henry, iniesta was too good on the left to switch to the middle. May be thats why Eto'o ran to pep, he knew the idea crossed in pep mind before telling himself"well...but he(eto'o)may score any moment" so he kept him. I just wish if we used henry in the box also, we were crossing the balls to the "land of never-never where everything real is unreal" in the second half, one more head to bother that devil between betis posts would have been a smart idea.
4) Busquets and Corners, he always focus completely on the ball and forget the man he is marking. It also happened against racing.
5) The second goal was a mix, But one player who also carry responsibility (partially) and may not be noticed is Hleb, Alves closed down to back the two Central backs, and if you can watch the game again check where Hleb was standing. I doubted that pep asked him to stay there for counters, but then it would have been better to ask Iniesta to generate counters.
6) I am not sure if Gudi was on the bench, I think he would have been a good addition in the last 15 minutes. his work rate would have helped when the team ran out of fuel. Bojan Substitution made it more crowdy than needed.
7) Good that we are testing our options now, all the teams will drop points so relax:)
8) Eto'o scored the 100th goal while Xavi today equaled the second most stared player record in the history of barcelona. (OK you organize that sentence properly...)
I always say to myself "Ramzi stop rambling in circles!" but I keep doing it no matter what! so I will tie my fingers together to give my keyboard a break, I see smoking between the letters already!
Tomorrow RM may have lot of players unavailable;)
Oh Ramzi! Just go! Man....
something different: does anyone knows David Moreno? he's very similiar playing like Messi.
@dinao
If you mean after his second goal then it probably was something to do with the fact that he didn't get substituted by Bojan. Maybe his way of expressing his gratitude in pep's faith in him?
It don't think this game has been a big drama. It'll be good to keep the players with both their feet on the ground!
Too bad that Hleb and Keita don't try to show what their worth in the few occasions they get to play.
The keeper reminded me of Hildebrand last year. So frustrating to see every effort getting blocked.
pique-caceres CB paring scares me all the time...
they need the experienced partner like puyol or rafa.
we miss gaby so much.
when will he be back?
I was impressed with those two young center backs! I think in the second half they both showed a lot of class.
Its always difficult for the defense when Yaya is not in the team; so I applaud them.
Dani Alves was not at his ussual best today....
not a bad point...Betis meant business.
http://www.goal.com/en-us/Articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=1110184
lol look at this article. Yaya is going to arsenal apparently. it seems like they had this on backlog from like 3 months ago and decided now would be a good time to throw it out there.
In the first game against Betis, Eto'o was hugging Guardiola and jumping all over him, and in this one he was screaming. I think coach managed to control his ego (Ego'o) :) after all he is a manager. IMO that is a sign of a good coach. BTW Eto'o is the best striker and Guardiola the best coach for FCB.
As a matter of fact, I would only ditch Hleb, Gudjohnsen and Sylvinho, and replace them for Ribery and some strong left back.
I love this team! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6pdYCO-Zqk
I m going to give this a shot. I expect everyone will jump on me crush me to the ground but i wanna do it anyway.
PEP SCREWED UP LAST NIGHT
I am not talking about the starting line-ups they were fair enough and it was up to him to evaluate who was ready for the game and who was not; I am talking about the substitutions.
At half-time the first thing Pep should have done was remove Busquets who played like his feet were stuck in cement and bring on Yaya. This would have improved the distribution and allowed the team to have to stop worrying about Emana who tormented us right to the end.
Messi for Hleb was expected n that was ok.
Now what Pep needed was another man to mess things up inside the box. He could have
1. Relied on Keita who though he wasn't impressive as the pressure builds in the latter stages of the game would have spent more time in the box.
2. Brought Henry on as a direct striker to join Eto'o in the box. This one is more complicated as it has to be done while leaving Iniesta on the LW. So if you take Keita off to do this you need Toure/Busquets to do a massive job of covering the entire midfield. So it would not have been possible without the first bringing on Toure for Busquets.
What Pep did was to take Keita off and then have Iniesta move into midfield. Sure Henry got a few crosses in but did he do anything better than Iniesta did in the 1st half ??? Because of this Iniesta's productivity also dropped, like I have said before it is much more difficult for any player to dribble through the centre rather than on the flanks, Hell, even Messi found it difficult starting from a central position yesterday. And besides it meant we had only a lone Eto'o to attack the crosses (it cant be right if the other player to get closest to the crosses was Xavi) with even Keita's occasional runs no longer available.
The last one was even more peculiar. Bojan came on and played on the right so Messi moved to the centre where he stood around barely getting a touch on the ball. WHY??
Anyway, its not the end of the world but its an important lesson. I hope players like Pique, Caceres and Busquets learn from the experience. Its possible with time to convert these "bad days in the office" to just "not so great" days as Alves, Xavi, Toure, etc can teach you.
Betis should have points deducted for their time-wasting, with the hiding of balls and before that throwing extra balls onto the field.
The never-say-die spirit was evident for all to see though. And Eto'o !! those are the goals we love to see from you. Hope there are many more of those.
(p.s: hope Guardiola is working on a new penalty-taker :P)
Oh, and i didn't mention my favourite player Valdes (..sic !) who kept us in the game. Betis should have got at least 2 more in the 2nd half but for VV, the man.
Shame about the draw. What a game from Iniesta.
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