If every Barcelona player had worked as hard and as selflessly as Antoine Griezmann this season, Ernesto Valverde would still be in a job. It's ironic because El Txingurri's fate as Barca boss was 99% sealed when he substituted Griezmann with Barca 2-1 up in the derby match against Espanyol at the start of the month.

Remember what happened from there? This Barcelona side, an eight-stone weakling in big away European contests at Roma and Liverpool, and one that had to cling on for dear life in Prague and Dortmund this season, had become almost as pallid and paper-thin on the road in La Liga.

Think of the limp and rag-doll nature of their defeats at San Mames against Athletic, away to Granada and at Levante. Not to mention long, unimpressive passages of play where the will to compete might have been there but the wherewithal wasn't, like at Osasuna and Atletico. Then, at rock-bottom Espanyol, Barcelona were in the lead and, suddenly, Frenkie de Jong was sent off.

Valverde, incredibly, switched to a 4-3-2 formation, leaving the almost static Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi up front. He rejected the absolutely blindingly obvious idea of taking one of the two 30-something strikers off, reverting to a 4-4-1 and leaving Griezmann to hare around in left midfield, closing down the channels. Espanyol exploited Valverde's choices several times before scoring down that side to claim a 2-2 draw.

The loss of Griezmann, with his utterly ingrained "the team comes first" mentality that had been drilled into him at Atleti like a fundamental rearrangement of brain circuits, stood out.

It's true that Griezmann has been imperfect, his learning process next to Messi and Suarez has been apparent and, as a dad of two young kids, one of whom is 18 months, I know that recuperative sleep has sometimes been at a premium for him. Also he's been operating to new standards but in an underperforming team. But the idea that he, not Suarez or Messi, should be withdrawn against an energized and aggressive Espanyol side, especially one that had just been given a one-man advantage, was a catastrophic error.

Antoine Griezmann has failed to win over fans after joining Barcelona from Atletico Madrid for €120 million. Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images

What's more, Valverde compounded that mistake by not even using his third substitute during that fevered 10-minute spell (plus added time) during which Espanyol equalised and nearly won. If you saw a third-division coach making a mistake like that, you'd have a word, immediately.

Valverde is top quality, as a man and a football thinker, and the mistakes in that derby were simply a testimony to burnout, how worn down by the kilowatt frazzle any coach experiences when he's head honcho at Barcelona, in good times or bad. Josep Maria Bartomeu, the Barcelona president, made a complete hash of sourcing his replacement, thrashing about with unsuccessful attempts to persuade coach after coach before settling on Quique Setien, but you can at least understand his concerns in the aftermath of a Catalan derbi when two points -- which at this rate could be vital in the title race -- were tossed away.

Before that flashpoint, Griezmann's worth to Valverde had been on the rise. He'd scored opening goals in three of the four matches immediately before the Espanyol contest, then put Barcelona ahead in the Supercopa semifinal against Atleti on a night when, ultimately, Valverde's time was up. But what's galling and, to my mind, inexplicable is that many (fans, media and ex-players) seem to be underwhelmed by, and disparaging of, Griezmann.

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After Setien took charge of his first game last weekend, a 1-0 win at home to Granada, there were plaudits for many other players while Griezmann was accused of being invisible or unimportant throughout the 90 minutes. It's absolute, utter nonsense: in fact, Griezmann was fundamental to the fact that while they struggled to find good, fruitful scoring positions before eventually going up 1-0, despite absolute domination of possession, Barcelona stayed competitive and fluid. All this even though he's a striker, even though Suarez was absent, he made numerous runs to press, to cover and to recuperate the ball.