Menor que un club Written by Dan on October 24, 2011

Not everyone enjoys watching Barcelona play football these days, some find them incredibly boring, but I happen to be among the group who gets a lot of pleasure from watching them play.

I’m reluctant to hold them up as an example of what other teams should be doing – least of all Aston Villa – as they have players from another planet in terms of ability. Often, if you try to replicate Barcelona without the same quality players, you’ll fail miserably and look pretty stupid in the process.

That said, I still believe that Ciaran Clark could play the Sergio Busquets role.

Barcelona aren’t the best team on the planet right now just because they have many of the best players in the world (although it definitely doesn’t hurt), they’re actually – and frighteningly – greater than the sum of their parts. Basically, they truly operate as a team and are not just a collection of insanely talented individuals with over-inflated egos.

Watch them, watch them closely, they do the basic things as a matter of routine. Watch the way every single player sets up during something as simple as a back-pass to the goalkeeper. Watch them, it’s drilled into them, it’s like a muscle memory; they all go to set positions which gives the keeper several short options and maximises the opportunity to retain possession, building once more from the back.

What they don’t do is all stand there with their mouths open whilst Valdés lumps it up in the rough direction of a team mate in the opposition’s half. Messi isn’t going to win many aerial battles after all.

Now, again, they have the players to pull that particular manoeuvre off. We found out last year that we only make life difficult for ourselves when we try to play out from the back. Sadly, it’s apparently better to take the 50/50 chance of maintaining possession by hoofing up field than it is to put our centre halves in the uncomfortable position of having to play with the ball at their feet.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t build routines that work for us and carry them out during the course of a match. It’s not rocket science, it’s basic stuff.

Taking a penalty for instance…

Penalty

I apologise for the poor quality picture below, I just screen-grabbed it from YouTube, let me describe what you’re seeing:

Believe it or not, this is Lionel Messi missing a penalty. Or, more to the point, having a poor penalty saved – the keeper has gone down to his right and is smothering the ball at the moment this picture was grabbed.

On this occasion, the goalkeeper held on to the ball; it was a particularly poor penalty in all fairness. It happens, even to the best, maybe he is human. But let’s suppose the keeper hadn’t clung on to it, where might the ball have bounced to?

Actually, it could have gone anywhere, but it may well have fallen around the left side of the goal, in the six yard box, up and to the left of the referee’s position. That’s the most likely place.

And look who’s heading there. No less than three Barca players; two of them had lurked four or five yards outside the box and timed their run into the box a fraction of a second after Messi struck the ball.

It’s a slim chance that Messi will miss. It’s an even slimmer chance that the keeper will save it. It’s even slimmer still that he will parry the ball into a convenient position to gratefully tap in on the follow up.

But it does happen. And it’s just basic stuff to follow up on it. Barcelona do it, even when the world greatest player is at the spot.

Now look at Darren Bent putting away the penalty against West Brom on Saturday:

I put this picture out on Twitter last night, 100% of the replies told me that Barry Bannan was the only one following up because of the confidence we have in our star striker.

Bollocks.

It’s good enough for Barcelona. It’s good enough for Hackney Marshes on a Sunday. It’s not rocket science, it’s jogging half a dozen yards into the box on the off chance. It’s basic, basic stuff and apparently only young Bannan has the nous to do it.

Okay, so Bent scored this time, but it still pisses me off seeing this. Not because of what it is, but what it’s indicative of. It’s the little things like this that show why we’re where we are.

Confidence? Gimme a break, we’re in the bottom half of the table after a very kind first quarter of the fixture list; the remaining three-quarters will provide a stiffer test.

Let’s call it what it really is; it’s complacency, and we cannot afford it.

The observation was made in the comments section of the recent Man City tunnel cam post, let me repeat it here:

The Villa boys didn’t look like a team at all. They didn’t look determined before the game, nor sad after! Bad signs

The city boys stayed together and went out together. Our guys were ambling on and off whenever they liked. No wonder they don’t play like a unit.

Indeed.

The question has been asked many times; could Man City’s millions buy a team, or merely bring together a collection of overpaid individuals. We may well have seen evidence of the less cynical answer in devastating fashion at Old Trafford on Sunday.

We’re not a team, not really. This penalty example is just a little glimpse; we’re not operating as a unit. Is it any surprise that we didn’t put up much of a fight when unfairly reduced to 10 men on Saturday?

Barcelona have a tagline emblazoned into the Camp Nou: “més que un club”. ‘More than a club’. Am I wrong in feeling like ours should be “menor que un club” right now?

(That’s ‘less than a club’ if you hadn’t guessed).