Post-Match Thread: Shakhtar Donetsk vs Barcelona [Champions League]

28 comments

1. We are bad. Very bad. Something needs to happen or this season is in the bin.

2. Genuinely had more fun watching Valverde’s Barca than this drab football since the world cup. It’s been a year.

   I can’t wait to hear the excuses on this one – Shakhtar are coming from a war-torn country and playing in a stadium thats not even theirs. Pitch was fine. Majority of the injured players are back. Couldn’t ask for an easier group. What’s the excuse now?

   Just sideways and backwards, cross into the stratosphere and repeat. Outclassed, outcoached, outplayed once again. Embarrassing.

3. This loss is on Xavi. Putting dead weights in the lineup.. Romeu and Alonso. Playing Ferran on the left when his comfortable position is on the right/centre. Absolutely no tactics. No urgency from the players.. it’s like they rolled off the bed and walked on to the pitch.

   Pathetic.

4. Disgusting disgusting game, we are horrific. Literally ashamed of our team right now.

   How can Xavi watch the first half and not immediately make changes.

   I don’t care what anyone says Yamal was miles better than Raphina tonight, and Yamal wasn’t even that good.

   How are we losing to Shaktar Donetsk with a team like this, obviously we’re missing Frenkie but all our other players should be good enough to easily beat them.

   Xavi’s tactics have to be improved as fast as possible , you can’t rely on Cross and Inshallah with the quality of our players.

5. https://i.redd.it/l5n61o1hczyb1.gif

6. if we dont top the group fire xavi no questions asked

7. I feel nothing

8. Last good game barca played was in the middle of september, something really has to change

9. Good thing this took place early, can still go out and pretend nothing ever happened instead of having to go to bed immediately after lmao.

10. One shot on target vs Shakhtar is WILD

11. This isn’t just about this loss, the last few or dozen games we’ve played have been really bad. No build up play, pretty dead going forward.

12. Deserved loss. This team starts nearly every game out with complacency. Tonight even our defense looked a bit slow and disinterested. This team really needs both a spark of energy and some new offensive tactics. We look short on ideas in the final third. It would also be nice to have a striker who makes better runs and can do more on his own. Create at least the occasional goal out of nothing.

13. Here come the single celled organisms telling us we’re being reactionary and we should just swallow whatever trash performance the team pulls no matter how many times they do.

14. Anyone not blaming Xavi is a moron

15. That shit was a two pack of ass

16. We just need to work on our short & long passing, shooting, movement off the ball, positioning, crossing, decision-making, set pieces, man-marking, dribbling, fitness, ball control, tackling, counter-attacking, overlapping, running, blocking & scoring goals.

17. Just praying for the day a world class manager becomes available so we can stop experimenting with second rate managers.

18. Xavi out if we come second in this group. That’s it. Guy is a fraud in Europe. Even with this easy group, even when we have all our players bar frenkie, we played like shit today.

    Worst display. Even worse than the one showed in anoeta

19. We got blessed with the easiest group and we’ve struggled against Porto, we almost choked against shaktar in the first meeting and now we fully took an L tonight. Let me not even bring up la liga but it’s so apparent we have so many flaws in our play style. Xavi’s time is running out tbh

20. Xavi lacks gameplan, I’ve been ranting this again and again. Even during Valverde or Koeman days we weren’t this awful.
    Our players were just wandering on the turf. They can’t even break into the final third. This team seriously needs a good playmaker.

21. It’s rare to see the players being so out of sync with one another. It’s like each and every player on the team was playing with half a second of lag and absolutely nothing connected.

22. That was very bad, but it was exactly as I guessed it would go. “A night for the ages” said the announcer, and I was like, “um, you haven’t been watching us recently?” Most of our positive results and draws are the result of luck.

23. Araujo was grabbing on his thigh. I hope he’s okay

24. I have watched us lose against the likes of Celtic and even watched Madrid lose against Shakthar, but the sad thing is this did not feel like an upset. We were genuinely worse than them. They were far more threatening than us in attack and very solid defensively.

    This is not a reactionary take but I genuinely think Xavi is not it. We will be wasting the prime years of Gundo, Pedri and Fdj and a massive La Masia talent pool if we stick with someone who doesn’t have a proper attacking game plan

25. This was a mixture of poor performance and a tactical ineptitude, I thought the days of solely relying on crosses was over but boy was I wrong, with the quality of players we have you’re telling me we can’t string together passing sequences instead of hoofball? I don’t even want to waste time on individual player mistakes but all the reasons we give them as to why they aren’t performing but reasons become excuses very quickly. What an embarrassing performance on the back of that Sociedad game. I always try to be fair to Xavi and not compare him to past successful Barca managers but this is not FC Barcelona, we cant even get a #beautyindefeat lol

26. Well Xavi is not a barca level coach. No plan as such in each match. Our results really depends on player connecting with each other on pitch. It’s enough. Now many of you will tell this is only our second loss this season crap. Bull shit look at our games.
    Barca is winning because of its player not because of Xavi. Now the honeymoon period of new players is over back to square one.
    Prev season we were same just the luck was our side. No gameplay no control just in each match hoping to win by 1-0.

27. Believe it or not, but Xavi is clueless

28. Xavi may be a legend as a player, but he is terrible coach, doesn’t seems to be learning from his mistakes. Laporta has given him all he has asked for by sacrificing our club’s future.

    Mentality is not the only thing to win matches. Gameplan is also needed.