1 Barcelona looked increasingly vulnerable and confused

talkSPORT’s man with his finger on La Liga’s pulse reports back from the Primera Division…

“Only a Catalan would be moaning about the lack of possession after we won 4-0,” claimed Joan Maria Pou, the host of Barcelona-based radio station Rac1’s flagship football programme, in the aftermath of yet another Barca La Liga victory on Saturday night.

Pou is wrong, though. Barcelona have been so synonymous with possession-based football for over two decades now, that their recent performances will eventually filter out to the wider world and become a talking point well beyond the Iberian Peninsula. Something is changing quite dramatically at the Camp Nou.

The signs have been creeping in bit-by-bit this season. The earliest and most obvious were the increased use of long balls from the defenders and the reduced number of passes in moving towards the opposition goal mouth. Then there’s the increasingly exhausted image of Sergio Busquets running around the pitch like a man possessed, asked to put out fires more numerous than his two legs alone can cope with.

Most notably, we are also seeing a central defensive pairing that, incredibly, looks even more exposed than it has before over the last 12 months. The result of this concoction is that Barcelona are ‘more vertical’, control games less and look even more vulnerable at the back.

The players themselves have not been shy to comment on the current state of play, either. Gerard Pique, in an interview with Filippo Ricci from Gazzetta dello Sport, claimed that Barca may have “become slaves” to their passing style, and that, these days, if the opposition is suffocating them, “hitting the ball long isn’t bad”.

There was an attempt to calm the subsequent furore in the Catalan media by claiming that his words had been taken out of context, that he was merely alluding to alternatives that have always been used by Barcelona. Alternatives used by iconic players like Ronald Koemen or Rafa Marquez in some of their most successful teams.

Yet it is becoming increasingly evident that the long ball from the back isn’t being used strictly as an alternative by Barcelona, but rather, as a first option. Against Rayo Vallecano at the weekend, it was striking that Victor Valdes almost always opted for a long kick out of goal, rather than attempting the kind of short passes to the centre-backs that have become one of the most admired facets of Barcelona’s style in recent years.

Tata Martino claimed in his post-match interview that those long balls were ‘forced’ by Rayo’s high-pressing game, yet in the past Barcelona would wriggle out of precisely that kind of pressure by showing composure and playing intricate short balls at the back, allowing them to build in a controlled manner from the first line of play forwards, rather than risk seeing the ball quickly played back towards their own goal-mouth as is often the case from long goal kicks.

Were the long passes against Rayo really any more effective at relieving the pressure than attempting to play out from the back? According to LATDP’s Carles Domenech, only four of the long balls attempted by Victor Valdes against Rayo were successful, with 16 failing to find their man. Judge their effectiveness for yourself.

That wasn’t the most striking statistic from the game, however. Despite the 4-0 scoreline in favour of Barcelona, the talking point post-match was that they had lost in the possession stakes for the first time since 2008, with 48 per cent to Rayo Vallecano’s 52 per cent. The last time that had happened, Barça were on the receiving end of a 4-1 thrashing at the Santiago Bernabeu, the final dying whimper of Frank Rijkaard’s era.

Back in 2008, that result was a precursor to the ushering in of Pep Guardiola, who helped the club to get back to it’s most Cruyffian roots. More of the ball, not less of it, was his response (and lest we forget, a winning response). This time, Barcelona’s loosened grip on the ball is only looks likely to foreshadow more of the same, an indicator of the new ideas being put into practice by a new coach, rather than the failure to carry out old ideas by a lame-duck coach like Rijkaard in his final days.

Another 4-0 win last week, this time against Ajax, provided further insight into what we can expect at the Camp Nou this season. Instead of pressing from the front, another key to Guardiola’s success, and something we were all led to believe there would be much more of with Tata Martino in charge, Barcelona opted to cede the ball to Ajax, allowing their opponents to bring it out from the back.

The Catalans then tried to rob possession back in midfield and break into the space left behind, sometimes successfully, often not. The shock spread around the radio and social media alike: Barcelona were playing on the counter-attack.

Lionel Messi confirmed that analysis in his post-match interview. “There will be days when it’s better to congest the pitch and play on the counter-attack”; he was quite explicit. A clear example of that was Barca’s second goal against the Dutch side, with the Catalans winning the ball back deep in their own half, then Sergio Busquets providing a final ball for Lionel Mess to complete a counter-attacking move. It was a goal more typical of Real Madrid under Jose Mourinho than Barcelona under Pep Guardiola. A clear signal of the shift being put in place on the training pitches of Sant Joan Despi.

Yet while the 4-0 scorelines may suggest that the consequences of these shifts are all positive, a more considered look at those games reveals weaknesses that are ripe for exploitation by tougher rivals. Against Ajax, Victor Valdes had to make seven saves, while against Rayo, he made nine. In both games he saved penalties, the conceding of which is in itself symptomatic of Barcelona’s vulnerability.

To put those figures in context, on matchday five of the 2010/11 La Liga season (a year widely regarded as one of the high-points of Barca’s success under Pep Guardiola), Victor Valdes only had to make three saves in a Barca win against Athletic Bilbao. In their Champions League opener that year against Panathinaikos, the equivalent to the recent Ajax fixture, Valdes didn’t have to make a single stop in his team’s victory.

Barcelona are allowing the opposition far more opportunities on goal than they used to, that much is clear. Fortunately for the Blaugrana, so far this season, Valdes is in the form of his life, but the keeper can’t keep rivals at bay forever.

Stronger, more clinical opponents will arrive in the Champions League. Would Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, for example, who put four past Schalke at the weekend away from home, really fail to take one of the seven shots on goal afforded to Ajax? It’s difficult to imagine. That should be particularly alarming, too, considering teams like Bayern are the ones Martino is supposed to be putting Barcelona back on an even level with this year.

Perhaps the most worrying thing about all of this is that is suggests a level of naivety from Barcelona, of a relaxation in the application of the ideas that made them so indestructible when applied with the correct vigour. Valdes himself has bemoaned the slack defensive attitude of the players in front of him, noting a week ago that Barcelona lack “control in the forward runs of the full-backs and wide forwards”, and that “Busquets can’t do everything” when it comes to defending. If your goalkeeper, who can see everything unfolding in front of him, thinks that there isn’t the correct balance in the team, then it’s probably worth listening to.

Aren’t these weaknesses exactly what hiring Martino was supposed to address? Similar criticisms surrounding a new-found defensive fragility were levelled at Tito Vilanova’s Barcelona around this time last season, after they were frequently required to come from behind to win games.

Yet as long as they continued to chalk three points up in La Liga, it was difficult to make those criticisms stick. Later on in the season those doubts would prove true however, when such failings proved fatal in the Champions League.

Will the same realisation occur this season, when it is already too late to right the wrongs? In order for that not to happen, Martino needs to make sure that his players understand exactly what it is that is being asked of them, whether that is to play on the counter-attack, keep the ball or otherwise, and fine-tune it, as confusion is the only idea that reigns amongst his team at the moment.

A half-baked version between the old and the new is only making Barcelona a weaker team, and won’t win them another Champions League when there is a well-oiled machine like Bayern around. The kind of well-oiled machine that used to reside at the Camp Nou. With Pep Guardiola at the helm.

Elsewhere: Osasuna 2-1 Elche, Real Sociedad 0-0 Malaga, Almeria 2-2 Levante, Valladolid 0-2 Atletico, Betis 0-0 Granada, Celta 0-0 Villarreal, Real Madrid 4-1 Getafe, Valencia 3-1 Sevilla.

Tonight: Athletic head to Barcelona to take on Espanyol. La Liga fixtures resume in the midweek, with Barcelona and Atletico both in action on Tuesday, and the top spot in play.

Can Barcelona return to the head-heights of Guardiola’s days, and are they going about it in the right way? Let us know bellow…