The strangest thing was that the players that were rested and the system that was working spectacularly well all indicated that the 11 players that we thought would play Would indeed be picked.We go through all that only to change it at the last minute, move Gundo back move Foden centrally put Sterling on the wing and leave Fern on the bench. Even if you thought you had seen something at least start with the 11 that were working like a machine and then change it.
This all stems from the time at Barca where the players persuaded him to play the usual way and lost 4-0 to Real Madrid. He has never forgotten that. He may have been right and we would have lost by a bigger margin playing our usual way but unfortunately I doubt it.
Good post, but it was at Bayern they lost to Madrid, not Barca.
But I agree that’s where this tinkerman in the biggest games started.
At Barca he pretty much played the exact same team for 4 years straight, and they’re the best team of all time.
................Valdes
Alves....Pique...Puyol....Alba
................Busquets
.......Xavi..............Iniesta
RW.............Messi.........LW
The personnel in the front 3 changed season to season, but the shape didn’t. Messi sometimes played down the middle, sometimes from the right.
But the shape, and the personnel in that back 6 didn’t change. Everyone knew how they were going to play, but they couldn’t do anything to stop them, because they were just too good.
It’s been a recurring theme during his time with us. Generally when we’ve played 433, we are unstoppable, teams cannot live us. When he starts dicking about and playing novelty formations, we tend to go to shit.
Imagine in that Barca team above if in a final he dropped Busquets and played Xavi as a number 6? Would never happen in a million years.
