Barça 1 Rubin Kazan 2

Had a bit of time to let this result sink in. Not the end of the world, although we have made our lives more difficult. That being said there is no reason why we cannot go to Russia and Ukraine and get points (if not wins) and certainly we are capable of beating Inter at home.

Just watched the extended highlights and to be fair, we didnt even play that badly. 13 shots on target to their 3, the problem is in the finishing. Pedro, Zlatan, Messi, Yaya all had great chances to score and either made it easy for the keeper or hit the post. These games happen. We got lucky in our last game and we got unlucky tonight. Funnily enough I thought we played a lot better tonight than we did against Valencia and really if it wasnt for a freak first goal and a certain Mexican for the second we might have seen a very different result. That first goal made like much easier for Rubin who could sit back and defend for their lives. Credit where credit is due, they defended exceptionally well.

What pisses me off is that apart from their 2 goals they didnt trouble us AT ALL. Not one bit. I cannot remember even a half chance for them. They had a free kick which was saved and two goals. Adding up to their 3 shots on goal.

I dont like like laying the blame on single players, because i generally feel that teams win and lose together, but Marquez was awful today. He played a part in both goals we conceded. The first was a bit unlucky, but the second was just poor positioning. He opened space for the attacker to run into and invited the pass instead of closing down the space. Puyol would have been in there like the crazed caveman that he is.

of course this is a shitty result, but i think we basically did well. kazan had two shots and scored on both occasions, so i don't think there's any reason to worry.
as pep said after the game, football is a funny thing, and tonight it truly was (well, not funny for us, but..).

nic, i think your overall rating of our players tonight are a bit harsh. what did VV do wrong? he had no saves, yes, but can you blame him? Piquenbauer was great as always in my point of view and both Messi, Pedro and Zlatan did better than 5,5. as i see it, only truly bad performances came from Marquez (he's looking old) and Bojan, who just came back from his injury.

i'm sure we'll go through to the next round.

right, blame the certain "Mexican"... what kind of horse shit comment is that? If you have beef with his game, leave it at that. Where he's from has nothing to do with it. When Iniesta makes a rec league BS pass to Toure (which really set-up the 2nd goal) and he also hacked down a player for a yellow card; is he a certain "Spaniard"? No, he's just another player on the TEAM who contributed to our unfortunate defeat.

And Nic, I agree with your player ratings. Sure we out shot them. But we didn't finish our chances. We didn't do what it took to win the game. Like you said, we didn't cross balls in the air, where surely we would have had more success, we lost possession too easily off the dribble and we didn't pull ourselves together as champions and get the win. (or tie)

I agree all great teams need luck too. Today we had none! But we were at home, and we could have done a little better with our chances. So for me, the player ratings seem fair.

And Like Frede said, i'm sure too we'll go through to the next round!

Its not how many chances you create but how many you put behind the net that count. Having let out some of my sarcasm, I think perhaps there's a silver lining to this result.

We should be thankful that this wasn't the knockout stage and Inter are helping our qualification chances as well by drawing games.
Plus I'm sure the backroom staff will help rectify some of the errors like failure to use the aerial route through Ibrcadabra (as pointed out by Nic),the need to be clinical upfront etc.

The recent run of disappointing performances should hopefully serve as as an indicator to Pep and Co. of the need to being in some quality reinforcements during the January window especially with the ACN coming up.

No qwams!

Marques was jst 2 erratic 4 dat match bt am sure pep has learnt his lesson we will win at russia

Haven't seen the match yet, since I worked. It's this sort of 'complication' that really gets me going with the campaign. Will comment more fully on my own blog as soon as I can watch the game (TiVo!).

From watching them play Los Che, I'd have to say the blaugrana are a little winded. Some of it is FIFA virus and some of it is injuries. That there is the World Cup in summer 2010 only makes the whole 'FIFA virus' thing more stressful for those players bound by international duty. Consider what Messi's been going through with Argentina, as an example. Yeah, Barça are having a time of it, for sure. I've no doubt this is a solid team, but it needs just a little more adjustment and a nice stretch of fit players.

firstly, eswardo, stop being so sensitive. no one is blaming marquez because he is mexican. saying "that certain" whatever is a common english phrase, especially in british football.

ok, onto the game. im looking at this game sort of like a schizophrenic, in 3 distinct ways.

so, the rational side is saying, come on guys, this is really the first hurtful/embarrassing loss for us in quite a long time, it was bound to happen some time. we were unlucky to concede so early, and after that rubin really did defend rather brilliantly. they put in so many last ditch tackles that prevented sure goals. something along those lines.

however, the more emotional side is angry about last night, which i was. we can talk about poor luck all we want, but having to rely on last minute headers to only DRAW at home to a team we should beat is really poor. frankly, i didnt think we played that well at all. again so many passes were off target. pique needs to hit is man if he wants to gallavant forward, because when he misses his target he puts us in huge issue. marquez, well, last night was the sign he no longer has it, lets hope that was noted. iniesta probably had his worst game for us in a long time. pedro again is proving my first instinct on him right, being he lacks the necessary quality. he is fast as hell, cracks a ball very hard, but with the ball at his feet, its often frustrating. a very angry version last night would have also said that last year this would NEVER have happened by this stage of the year, which brings along certain other fears and annoyances that i will leave alone.

the third version, more in between is saying, this may be a good thing. we havent been playing very well this year, almost every game. maybe tonight exposed that, and hopefully everyone has shocked and appalled by last night and are ready to work harder to change this. no blame on zlatan, but our team isnt flowing like last season, and that needs to be fixed. also, messi, iniesta, even the fundamentally solid xavi had poor games last night, and saying that is a very very rare thing, so maybe we are just in a strange poor patch. fatigue could be a factor too. but still, i must admit i didnt enjoy last night one bit, more start to finish. going one behind so early, i wasnt too upset. i was kinda excited to see how we can handle it. and really the posts and many shots almost flatter us, because in reality our game wasnt that great at all. it was for the most part slow, imprecise, and predictable. we are going to play EVERY single game of the CL against a team of 10 defenders, and we need to get a handle on that.

im not going to get more doom and gloom than that. i really hope positives come out of this game. cause i know pep and the squad cannot be happy with themselves at all. im looking for a response on sunday night, if we dont bash in 3 or 4 versus zaragoza im gonna start getting a tad more worried.

Well, well, well... Didn't see the game so won't comment on it. But whith the benefit of hindsight, we can say this one was coming right to us. I think we had a great start to the season resultswise, but the play has generally been underwhelming. We had many excuses, the team has to gel and to integrate Zlatan, look at our injured players, everybody was out playing for the national team, all valid I think, but the truth still is that mostly, we have been far from the standards of last year (not an easy task to repeat that, I know). Particularly worrying is the fact that we don't score. 3 goals in 3 in the CL, 1 in our last 2 games in the championship, something is not working there.
Well, if we had to lose a game, I prefer it was this one where we can still fix things in the competition than in the championship where this kind of freak result could cause great damage to our ambitions. I realise I sound very pessimistic, but actually I'm not so much, a good loss sometimes allows you to give a good kick back. Last year we reacted very well to this kind of situation, plus let's not forget the team still has to gel, Henry was injured and the players were tired
But we need a reaction now, absolutely!
As for the CL, well, the group proves as difficult as I thought. Underestimate a russian champion to your own peril! Now we need to go twice in the eastern winter and to collect points there, and to have a full game against Inter three days before Madrid. We've put ourselves in a difficult situation whith this result, but I still largely trust the team to react well to it!
Visca Barça!

@eswardo....you took it completely the wrong way, its just an expression and I meant nothing by it. Certianly it wasnt an insult towards Mexicans. If it was Iniesta I would have said "a certain pale faced Spaniard".

@Blau
I think we played a decent game and you pointed out that we don't seem to be playing as well as last year....well as far as i recall whenever we came up against a well organised parked bus last year we struggled too. Lets not all forget the first game of last season, which was very, very similar to last nights game. Lots of chances missed vs one or two chances taken and we lose the game. We didnt play our best game, no, BUT we have never played particularly well against 10 men behind the ball. Its not like Rubin came to play, dominated the game, shared possession, stopped us from creating any chances…none of those things happened. If they had I would be worried. Last year all our best performances came against teams who tried to play football and our worst performances came against those who didn’t. The difference this season is that now most if not all teams are going to park the bus, play on the counter and pray for some good luck. Exactly what Rubin did and it paid off. I don’t see any reason to believe this game would have ended any differently last year, in fact I think we might have created less goal scoring opportunities. That is why we got Zlatan and that is what we are trying to improve on and I think its coming along. It certainly wont happen overnight..I am the kind of person who would rather draw positives than negatives and what I saw yesterday was a tired team trying their best to beat a very fresh, sharp opponent with only one goal : defend. That they got lucky over and over again is the nature of the game. We created more chances against this bus then I saw us create vs most buses last season. Certainly this is one of the better defensive performances I have seen from any opposition and we still...

created more than enough chances to win the game. That gives me a lot of hope, because a lot of key players are tired, jaded and not playing to their best. Still, we created chance after chance. Certainly a lot more chances than we created against teams like Chelsea last season and that was at the peak of our powers. So lets not all get too worked up yet. Trying to beat teams that refuse to play football is no easy task, and any team would struggle to create chances against 10 men parked in their own box. That is our curse and we have to find a way around it. It will take time and we will stumble along the way, but I have enough belief in the players and the coach that eventually we will find a way.

On a more postive note, how bout that goal from Zlatan! He is really starting to come along and once again he was our best attacker on the pitch. His touch and strength still astound me at times and did you see his FK!?!?! Alves shouldnt be allowed to go near FK's anymore. Now if only the players around him play the way we know they can....

I don't really know what to say about the game last night but the comments above pretty much summed up my feelings on it. The amount of stray passes last night was awfull and this is something that needs to be sorted.

I feel like everytime I comment here I end up giving out about Pedro but unfortunately today is no different, he holds play up way too much and picks the wrong pass. At one point Messi came over to the left in the first half and pedro played a pass to him and immediately Messi played the ball past the defender expecting Pedro to make an overlapping run to get on the end of it but once Pedro had played the ball he stopped and stayed in the one spot and the ball ran out for a goal kick. The other time he really annoyed me was when he had the ball pretty much beside the six yard box and he passed the ball diagonally across and out of the box about 30 yards for Alvs to have a shot, Ibra was in the 6 yard box waiting for the ball and he seemed to give Pedro a bit of a telling off after this.

We have 2 very difficult away games to come that we have to pick up points and a difficult last game at home against Inter. Can't you see the headlines now if we go into that last game at home needing a win and a certain someone comes back to the Camp Nou with a point to prove. I know its a lot of speculation but KARMA can be a BITCH and what comes around goes around.

I beg to disagree whith you on a few points, Hilal. Firstly on this belief that the only way to stop us is to park the bus. I already said here that I thought it's not the case. The teams who gave us the biggest problems last year were teams who weren't afraid to attack, I think of Valencia, Atletico of course and even Espanyol for exemple. These teams didn't seat back to wait us, they put a high pressure on our midfield and exploited the errors. I didn't see the Betis game last year so can't tell how they played, but other than that I think the only bus that really created us big trouble last year was Chelsea's (apart from the 2 first games of the season of course, which I don't really count as it was, well, just the beginning of the season really.) We didn't win all our other games whith ease of course, but mostly we cruised pretty freely and just destroyed a lot of buses in the way. And to date in this season, our worst game was at Valencia, who were pretty offensive I thought.
The thing I find a tad worrying this year is that we are very less at ease whith buses. Against Shaktar, Inter, Kiev and Kazan in Europe as against Almeria in La Liga, we had all the difficulties in the world to break them, and if they are unquestionably good teams, they are not of the quality of Chelsea either. Whereas we were disparaging buses for fun last year, we find difficult to repeat the feat this year, when we have just bought a player to resolve this specific point (and it's not a cheap dig at Zlatan whom I've found mostly excellent).
Still I'm also pretty optimistic for the following games and hope we will improve, but the evidence right now is that we are playing well under the standards of last season, for a good number of very valid reasons, but still. And if we want to stop Madrid in the Championship OR have a chance in the CL, I have a feeling we will have to be at least as good as we were last season. If we pretend to win both, we will have to be far better.

Barca is going to have a hard time against Rubin in Russia. I live in Moscow, and we have almost reached 0 degrees celcius. And it is even colder in Kazan.

"The teams who gave us the biggest problems last year were teams who weren't afraid to attack, I think of Valencia, Atletico of course and even Espanyol for exemple."

Really because as far as i recall every team that tried to play us, put us under pressure and attack got destroyed. We beat Sevilla home and away, Madrid home and away, Bayern and Lyon in the CL tried to play us and got destroyed. Villareal the same. Athletico Madrid we beat quite easily 3 out of 4 times and the last loss was because we had a particularly bad game and lost control.Maybe also because they had a lot more to play for (pride). All these teams did exactly what you said. Espanyol game was just bad luck and bad keeping. Valencia 2nd leg was a draw away from home and had our minds on other things (CL vs Chelsea, RM away). Utd tried to play us in the final and got schooled. They tried to do all the things you said to trouble us, but aside from 10 minutes they didnt trouble us.

"but mostly we cruised pretty freely and just destroyed a lot of buses in the way"

Wow, really? Again you will have to be more specific than that, would love an example of a half decent "bus" we destroyed with ease. I am not talking about numancias here but half decent teams that employed the same strategy as Rubin did last night. A lot of decent teams tried to play us last year and a lot of them got punished for it.

Our toughest games last year were against Chelsea, who played exactly like Rubin did last night and dont underestimate how well Rubin defended yesterday because they were quite outstanding. Definitely the best defense we have come up against this year. If you look at all the games we should have won last year but drew they were against avg teams that parked the bus: Getafe, Basel and Racing all at home, all teams we should beat, all parked the bus and all got points. Espanyol first leg away in the copa they parked it and we drew 0-0 and then in the 2nd leg when they had to play us we beat them 3-2.

Also Fredegar you gave the example of Almeria this season and how it seemed we struggled against their parked bus. Do you remember the score against them last year (5-0) and can you remember how they played because I can and they most certainly didnt park the bus last year. I remember because it surprised me...Their coach was Unai Emery and his style is to press the opposition high up the pitch, put pressure on the ball and attack. They did all those things and they got demolished. In general though he did this very well with Almeria last year and now he is coaching Valencia, who used exactly the same tactic against us last week. Did it unsettle us? Yes it did, but only because WE were playing poorly, the same thing happened last year in the first leg vs Lyon. When we are not quite on form then a team that presses us and puts pressure can be dangerous, BUT if we are on form and a team tries to do that they get destroyed. That is exactly what happened to Lyon, who tried to the same thing in the 2nd leg, when we did play well and when we beat them 5-2.

The bus is different and has always been different, we can play well against a parked bus and still not get a result. That is what we need to find a solution to... as long as we play well we will always beat the teams that try to pressure us, because when we are playing well, passing the ball and moving quick nobody can catch us. We proved that already last season against many top teams that tried to pressure us and attack and got punished. It only ever worked when WE were having an off day. However, against a parked bus it is a different story because we can play well and still draw or even lose because the other team is depending solely on luck and sometimes they get it, sometimes they dont. Chelsea didnt, Rubin did. That is football.

Wow, seems i need to watch the game since i'm reading different opinions.. i haven't since i lstened on the radio and thought it was enough suffering for a day.
What worries me, and i might have another opinion after i watch the game, is that it seems our midfield is strugling. Xavi and Iniesta are having problems to get the ball to Mess and Zlatan, and that is a huge issue. I thought it was only because valencia is a really tough side, but if this happened against rubi kazan too..it means Pep has to figure out a new strategy. I don't see Almeria, Valencia or Rubi Kazan only parking the bus as a strategy. I see annulment of our midfield (again, i haven't seen the game yesterday but i have an idea from what i listened). And that worries me a lot.

@Maria

Well the strategies employed by Rubin and Valencia were very different and both worked for different reasons. Neither are new and both caused us problems last season as well. Valencia pressed us hard, they challenged us for midfield dominance and they tried to put us off our passing game. Rubin just parked it for 90 minutes and caught two lucky breaks.

The way i see it the Valencia game was more to do with us playing badly than them finding the solution to playing us. As I mentioned in my previous post they are not the first team to press us and succeed but it has only ever worked when we were not playing well (Eg Lyon, AM last season). No team has used this tactic successfully when we are on form, and some of the best teams have tried.

What worries me more is when teams park the bus because then we are relying on either being extremely efficient in front of goal or just getting lucky. Neither of which happened against Rubin. It is a problem we have had since last season and it is a problem we must find a solution to. On a positive note it seems like we are creating more chances against teams that use this tactic. Rubin played an exceptional game last night, they defended really well, so much so that I have to say i think they deserved a draw (not a win though They got lucky in the sense that the post was there when they needed it and they got their breaks when they needed them (their first goal REALLY made the game tough for us), but defensively all credit to them.

Maybe some will call me optimistic but I am not worried, not in the slightest. We had these types of performances last season too and I remember coming here and seeing all sorts of panic/doom and gloom and I remember trying to be the optimist back then too. Lets see how the team reacts now. If they fail to react then I might start to worry...

Well , the good thing that the bastareds lost too at home and they look more shaky than ever specially at the back ,Casillas and Dida looked like clowns today and people still blame Valdes and want a replacement for him , rubbish .
I don’t see how Ibra got only 5.5 ,in my opinion he was our only decent player on the pitch along side Pique and Abidal ,it is not his mistake that his shot hit the bar and people were not passing and making use of him ,he did set up to chances for Messi and Iniesta and scored from almost half a chance.
Our need for enforcement during January looks like a must now specially with the CAF coming on just as someone said .Those players are humans not bloody robots and they sure need a fine rest, to be honest yesterday was the worse game from Andres Iniesta since I don’t know when ,his passing and speed were horrible and he certainly could use a match off ,same goes to Marquez ,Bojan and Alves .
One last thing ,I m sure everyone saw Zlatan free kick ,hopefully he will be our main free kicks taker coz Mr.Alves has been absolutely horrible .

LINK
Ibra's free kick against Florentina.

Alves free kicks much like Roberto Carlos never amount to anything...

Well Hilal, I won't go into a war of details about every game of last season (I would certainly lose it), but we have a very different feeling about the games I did mention as well as the ones you did mention. One thing is you cannot tell me we had our heads not focussed against Valencia last year (what whith Madrid hot on our heels at this moment) and then give me Basel as a succesful bus like this was an important game for us. Speaking of Basel, as you mention them as a decent bus, I remember they played the same way in Switzerland and we had four beautiful goals after 25 minutes (that was the game where I realized this Barça team really had something special in it).
You "would love an example of a half decent "bus" we destroyed whith ease", well this will be difficult as the point is, if we destroyed it whith ease, then it certainly wasn't half decent, but I don't think that all the goleadas we gave last year were against teams who decided to play ambitiously.
You say we are only vulnerable to teams putting pressure on us when we have a bad day, I think we can say too that we have problems against teams just seating back only when we are poor. Again I didn't see the game tuesday, but the reports I've read generally don't imply we were particularly good. The best exemple is Chelsea, we had a nightmare day there, barely completing a pass, and we would have been far more dangerous if Alves just had given 5 good crosses on the ten he had before the 93rd minute. This point on the form of the day is not one way.
I believe we will agree to disagree, but my opinion is that Valencia's way is the most dangerous for us: pack the midfield, use your wings to annihilate ours, thus forcing us to attack through the center, win the ball back and go straight to the goal taking advantage of our high line of defense. Sure it's dangerous, but on a good day we will find a breach in any bus. The point is I think we don't have had many good days up to now this season.

I'll have to keep it short and sweet as I've got PC problems.

The game was simply POOR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even the best team in the world can have off days.

@ Eswardo
Leave Hilal alone. There's nothing xenophobic about his statement.

A forgettable game to cap a forgettable week . I don't know if there are any positives to take out of this game .
We were once again exposed for lack of productivity on the left flank .
Pedro is just a temporary stop gap measure . He is NOT a Barça quality LW .
Abidal seems content with his tiky taky routine in our half but he is totally useless going forward . This makes it much easier for our opponents to just concentrate on our right flank(Messi&Alves) .

Messi seems to be worn out . I think he needs a break but Guardiola and Maradona would prefer to work him into the ground game in and game out . Alves needs to get his act together and show his form from last season . Bitching and complaining to the referee and diving is NOT going to do it .

We were unlucky not to score more goals but I think we are still on target to qualify along with Dynamo Kiev .

The best news of the week was the fall of the Evil Empire at their own place to an average AC Milan side .
Music to my ears !!

@ Fred

I agree that both tactics work against us, i guess we will have to agree to disagree as to which is more effective. On our day we can beat anybody, but i just think when a team parks the bus luck can help them, it doesnt always, but it can. When we are on form and a team tries to play us i dont think even luck will help them, maybe divine intervention! Thats the difference for me...

Either way we have not been playing our best this season, that is for sure, but i am positive we will get there eventually.

i have no problem with anybody taking the freekicks, i believe the team will make the best decision....if ibra always scores his during training, he'l def hv been the one taking it. ibra's freekicks are also more about probability...

I would rather see Xavi take the short ones and Ibrahimovic the long range variety . Alves should NOT attempt to take any free kicks of any kind !!

Had a bit of time to let this result sink in. Not the end of the world, although we have made our lives more difficult. That being said there is no reason why we cannot go to Russia and Ukraine and get points (if not wins) and certainly we are capable of beating Inter at home.

Just watched the extended highlights and to be fair, we didnt even play that badly. 13 shots on target to their 3, the problem is in the finishing. Pedro, Zlatan, Messi, Yaya all had great chances to score and either made it easy for the keeper or hit the post. These games happen. We got lucky in our last game and we got unlucky tonight. Funnily enough I thought we played a lot better tonight than we did against Valencia and really if it wasnt for a freak first goal and a certain Mexican for the second we might have seen a very different result. That first goal made like much easier for Rubin who could sit back and defend for their lives. Credit where credit is due, they defended exceptionally well.

What pisses me off is that apart from their 2 goals they didnt trouble us AT ALL. Not one bit. I cannot remember even a half chance for them. They had a free kick which was saved and two goals. Adding up to their 3 shots on goal.

I dont like like laying the blame on single players, because i generally feel that teams win and lose together, but Marquez was awful today. He played a part in both goals we conceded. The first was a bit unlucky, but the second was just poor positioning. He opened space for the attacker to run into and invited the pass instead of closing down the space. Puyol would have been in there like the crazed caveman that he is.

of course this is a shitty result, but i think we basically did well. kazan had two shots and scored on both occasions, so i don't think there's any reason to worry.
as pep said after the game, football is a funny thing, and tonight it truly was (well, not funny for us, but..).

nic, i think your overall rating of our players tonight are a bit harsh. what did VV do wrong? he had no saves, yes, but can you blame him? Piquenbauer was great as always in my point of view and both Messi, Pedro and Zlatan did better than 5,5. as i see it, only truly bad performances came from Marquez (he's looking old) and Bojan, who just came back from his injury.

i'm sure we'll go through to the next round.

right, blame the certain "Mexican"... what kind of horse shit comment is that? If you have beef with his game, leave it at that. Where he's from has nothing to do with it. When Iniesta makes a rec league BS pass to Toure (which really set-up the 2nd goal) and he also hacked down a player for a yellow card; is he a certain "Spaniard"? No, he's just another player on the TEAM who contributed to our unfortunate defeat.

And Nic, I agree with your player ratings. Sure we out shot them. But we didn't finish our chances. We didn't do what it took to win the game. Like you said, we didn't cross balls in the air, where surely we would have had more success, we lost possession too easily off the dribble and we didn't pull ourselves together as champions and get the win. (or tie)

I agree all great teams need luck too. Today we had none! But we were at home, and we could have done a little better with our chances. So for me, the player ratings seem fair.

And Like Frede said, i'm sure too we'll go through to the next round!

Its not how many chances you create but how many you put behind the net that count. Having let out some of my sarcasm, I think perhaps there's a silver lining to this result.

We should be thankful that this wasn't the knockout stage and Inter are helping our qualification chances as well by drawing games.
Plus I'm sure the backroom staff will help rectify some of the errors like failure to use the aerial route through Ibrcadabra (as pointed out by Nic),the need to be clinical upfront etc.

The recent run of disappointing performances should hopefully serve as as an indicator to Pep and Co. of the need to being in some quality reinforcements during the January window especially with the ACN coming up.

No qwams!

Marques was jst 2 erratic 4 dat match bt am sure pep has learnt his lesson we will win at russia

Haven't seen the match yet, since I worked. It's this sort of 'complication' that really gets me going with the campaign. Will comment more fully on my own blog as soon as I can watch the game (TiVo!).

From watching them play Los Che, I'd have to say the blaugrana are a little winded. Some of it is FIFA virus and some of it is injuries. That there is the World Cup in summer 2010 only makes the whole 'FIFA virus' thing more stressful for those players bound by international duty. Consider what Messi's been going through with Argentina, as an example. Yeah, Barça are having a time of it, for sure. I've no doubt this is a solid team, but it needs just a little more adjustment and a nice stretch of fit players.

firstly, eswardo, stop being so sensitive. no one is blaming marquez because he is mexican. saying "that certain" whatever is a common english phrase, especially in british football.

ok, onto the game. im looking at this game sort of like a schizophrenic, in 3 distinct ways.

so, the rational side is saying, come on guys, this is really the first hurtful/embarrassing loss for us in quite a long time, it was bound to happen some time. we were unlucky to concede so early, and after that rubin really did defend rather brilliantly. they put in so many last ditch tackles that prevented sure goals. something along those lines.

however, the more emotional side is angry about last night, which i was. we can talk about poor luck all we want, but having to rely on last minute headers to only DRAW at home to a team we should beat is really poor. frankly, i didnt think we played that well at all. again so many passes were off target. pique needs to hit is man if he wants to gallavant forward, because when he misses his target he puts us in huge issue. marquez, well, last night was the sign he no longer has it, lets hope that was noted. iniesta probably had his worst game for us in a long time. pedro again is proving my first instinct on him right, being he lacks the necessary quality. he is fast as hell, cracks a ball very hard, but with the ball at his feet, its often frustrating. a very angry version last night would have also said that last year this would NEVER have happened by this stage of the year, which brings along certain other fears and annoyances that i will leave alone.

the third version, more in between is saying, this may be a good thing. we havent been playing very well this year, almost every game. maybe tonight exposed that, and hopefully everyone has shocked and appalled by last night and are ready to work harder to change this. no blame on zlatan, but our team isnt flowing like last season, and that needs to be fixed. also, messi, iniesta, even the fundamentally solid xavi had poor games last night, and saying that is a very very rare thing, so maybe we are just in a strange poor patch. fatigue could be a factor too. but still, i must admit i didnt enjoy last night one bit, more start to finish. going one behind so early, i wasnt too upset. i was kinda excited to see how we can handle it. and really the posts and many shots almost flatter us, because in reality our game wasnt that great at all. it was for the most part slow, imprecise, and predictable. we are going to play EVERY single game of the CL against a team of 10 defenders, and we need to get a handle on that.

im not going to get more doom and gloom than that. i really hope positives come out of this game. cause i know pep and the squad cannot be happy with themselves at all. im looking for a response on sunday night, if we dont bash in 3 or 4 versus zaragoza im gonna start getting a tad more worried.

Well, well, well... Didn't see the game so won't comment on it. But whith the benefit of hindsight, we can say this one was coming right to us. I think we had a great start to the season resultswise, but the play has generally been underwhelming. We had many excuses, the team has to gel and to integrate Zlatan, look at our injured players, everybody was out playing for the national team, all valid I think, but the truth still is that mostly, we have been far from the standards of last year (not an easy task to repeat that, I know). Particularly worrying is the fact that we don't score. 3 goals in 3 in the CL, 1 in our last 2 games in the championship, something is not working there.
Well, if we had to lose a game, I prefer it was this one where we can still fix things in the competition than in the championship where this kind of freak result could cause great damage to our ambitions. I realise I sound very pessimistic, but actually I'm not so much, a good loss sometimes allows you to give a good kick back. Last year we reacted very well to this kind of situation, plus let's not forget the team still has to gel, Henry was injured and the players were tired
But we need a reaction now, absolutely!
As for the CL, well, the group proves as difficult as I thought. Underestimate a russian champion to your own peril! Now we need to go twice in the eastern winter and to collect points there, and to have a full game against Inter three days before Madrid. We've put ourselves in a difficult situation whith this result, but I still largely trust the team to react well to it!
Visca Barça!

@eswardo....you took it completely the wrong way, its just an expression and I meant nothing by it. Certianly it wasnt an insult towards Mexicans. If it was Iniesta I would have said "a certain pale faced Spaniard".

@Blau
I think we played a decent game and you pointed out that we don't seem to be playing as well as last year....well as far as i recall whenever we came up against a well organised parked bus last year we struggled too. Lets not all forget the first game of last season, which was very, very similar to last nights game. Lots of chances missed vs one or two chances taken and we lose the game. We didnt play our best game, no, BUT we have never played particularly well against 10 men behind the ball. Its not like Rubin came to play, dominated the game, shared possession, stopped us from creating any chances…none of those things happened. If they had I would be worried. Last year all our best performances came against teams who tried to play football and our worst performances came against those who didn’t. The difference this season is that now most if not all teams are going to park the bus, play on the counter and pray for some good luck. Exactly what Rubin did and it paid off. I don’t see any reason to believe this game would have ended any differently last year, in fact I think we might have created less goal scoring opportunities. That is why we got Zlatan and that is what we are trying to improve on and I think its coming along. It certainly wont happen overnight..I am the kind of person who would rather draw positives than negatives and what I saw yesterday was a tired team trying their best to beat a very fresh, sharp opponent with only one goal : defend. That they got lucky over and over again is the nature of the game. We created more chances against this bus then I saw us create vs most buses last season. Certainly this is one of the better defensive performances I have seen from any opposition and we still...

created more than enough chances to win the game. That gives me a lot of hope, because a lot of key players are tired, jaded and not playing to their best. Still, we created chance after chance. Certainly a lot more chances than we created against teams like Chelsea last season and that was at the peak of our powers. So lets not all get too worked up yet. Trying to beat teams that refuse to play football is no easy task, and any team would struggle to create chances against 10 men parked in their own box. That is our curse and we have to find a way around it. It will take time and we will stumble along the way, but I have enough belief in the players and the coach that eventually we will find a way.

On a more postive note, how bout that goal from Zlatan! He is really starting to come along and once again he was our best attacker on the pitch. His touch and strength still astound me at times and did you see his FK!?!?! Alves shouldnt be allowed to go near FK's anymore. Now if only the players around him play the way we know they can....

I don't really know what to say about the game last night but the comments above pretty much summed up my feelings on it. The amount of stray passes last night was awfull and this is something that needs to be sorted.

I feel like everytime I comment here I end up giving out about Pedro but unfortunately today is no different, he holds play up way too much and picks the wrong pass. At one point Messi came over to the left in the first half and pedro played a pass to him and immediately Messi played the ball past the defender expecting Pedro to make an overlapping run to get on the end of it but once Pedro had played the ball he stopped and stayed in the one spot and the ball ran out for a goal kick. The other time he really annoyed me was when he had the ball pretty much beside the six yard box and he passed the ball diagonally across and out of the box about 30 yards for Alvs to have a shot, Ibra was in the 6 yard box waiting for the ball and he seemed to give Pedro a bit of a telling off after this.

We have 2 very difficult away games to come that we have to pick up points and a difficult last game at home against Inter. Can't you see the headlines now if we go into that last game at home needing a win and a certain someone comes back to the Camp Nou with a point to prove. I know its a lot of speculation but KARMA can be a BITCH and what comes around goes around.

I beg to disagree whith you on a few points, Hilal. Firstly on this belief that the only way to stop us is to park the bus. I already said here that I thought it's not the case. The teams who gave us the biggest problems last year were teams who weren't afraid to attack, I think of Valencia, Atletico of course and even Espanyol for exemple. These teams didn't seat back to wait us, they put a high pressure on our midfield and exploited the errors. I didn't see the Betis game last year so can't tell how they played, but other than that I think the only bus that really created us big trouble last year was Chelsea's (apart from the 2 first games of the season of course, which I don't really count as it was, well, just the beginning of the season really.) We didn't win all our other games whith ease of course, but mostly we cruised pretty freely and just destroyed a lot of buses in the way. And to date in this season, our worst game was at Valencia, who were pretty offensive I thought.
The thing I find a tad worrying this year is that we are very less at ease whith buses. Against Shaktar, Inter, Kiev and Kazan in Europe as against Almeria in La Liga, we had all the difficulties in the world to break them, and if they are unquestionably good teams, they are not of the quality of Chelsea either. Whereas we were disparaging buses for fun last year, we find difficult to repeat the feat this year, when we have just bought a player to resolve this specific point (and it's not a cheap dig at Zlatan whom I've found mostly excellent).
Still I'm also pretty optimistic for the following games and hope we will improve, but the evidence right now is that we are playing well under the standards of last season, for a good number of very valid reasons, but still. And if we want to stop Madrid in the Championship OR have a chance in the CL, I have a feeling we will have to be at least as good as we were last season. If we pretend to win both, we will have to be far better.

Barca is going to have a hard time against Rubin in Russia. I live in Moscow, and we have almost reached 0 degrees celcius. And it is even colder in Kazan.

"The teams who gave us the biggest problems last year were teams who weren't afraid to attack, I think of Valencia, Atletico of course and even Espanyol for exemple."

Really because as far as i recall every team that tried to play us, put us under pressure and attack got destroyed. We beat Sevilla home and away, Madrid home and away, Bayern and Lyon in the CL tried to play us and got destroyed. Villareal the same. Athletico Madrid we beat quite easily 3 out of 4 times and the last loss was because we had a particularly bad game and lost control.Maybe also because they had a lot more to play for (pride). All these teams did exactly what you said. Espanyol game was just bad luck and bad keeping. Valencia 2nd leg was a draw away from home and had our minds on other things (CL vs Chelsea, RM away). Utd tried to play us in the final and got schooled. They tried to do all the things you said to trouble us, but aside from 10 minutes they didnt trouble us.

"but mostly we cruised pretty freely and just destroyed a lot of buses in the way"

Wow, really? Again you will have to be more specific than that, would love an example of a half decent "bus" we destroyed with ease. I am not talking about numancias here but half decent teams that employed the same strategy as Rubin did last night. A lot of decent teams tried to play us last year and a lot of them got punished for it.

Our toughest games last year were against Chelsea, who played exactly like Rubin did last night and dont underestimate how well Rubin defended yesterday because they were quite outstanding. Definitely the best defense we have come up against this year. If you look at all the games we should have won last year but drew they were against avg teams that parked the bus: Getafe, Basel and Racing all at home, all teams we should beat, all parked the bus and all got points. Espanyol first leg away in the copa they parked it and we drew 0-0 and then in the 2nd leg when they had to play us we beat them 3-2.

Also Fredegar you gave the example of Almeria this season and how it seemed we struggled against their parked bus. Do you remember the score against them last year (5-0) and can you remember how they played because I can and they most certainly didnt park the bus last year. I remember because it surprised me...Their coach was Unai Emery and his style is to press the opposition high up the pitch, put pressure on the ball and attack. They did all those things and they got demolished. In general though he did this very well with Almeria last year and now he is coaching Valencia, who used exactly the same tactic against us last week. Did it unsettle us? Yes it did, but only because WE were playing poorly, the same thing happened last year in the first leg vs Lyon. When we are not quite on form then a team that presses us and puts pressure can be dangerous, BUT if we are on form and a team tries to do that they get destroyed. That is exactly what happened to Lyon, who tried to the same thing in the 2nd leg, when we did play well and when we beat them 5-2.

The bus is different and has always been different, we can play well against a parked bus and still not get a result. That is what we need to find a solution to... as long as we play well we will always beat the teams that try to pressure us, because when we are playing well, passing the ball and moving quick nobody can catch us. We proved that already last season against many top teams that tried to pressure us and attack and got punished. It only ever worked when WE were having an off day. However, against a parked bus it is a different story because we can play well and still draw or even lose because the other team is depending solely on luck and sometimes they get it, sometimes they dont. Chelsea didnt, Rubin did. That is football.

Wow, seems i need to watch the game since i'm reading different opinions.. i haven't since i lstened on the radio and thought it was enough suffering for a day.
What worries me, and i might have another opinion after i watch the game, is that it seems our midfield is strugling. Xavi and Iniesta are having problems to get the ball to Mess and Zlatan, and that is a huge issue. I thought it was only because valencia is a really tough side, but if this happened against rubi kazan too..it means Pep has to figure out a new strategy. I don't see Almeria, Valencia or Rubi Kazan only parking the bus as a strategy. I see annulment of our midfield (again, i haven't seen the game yesterday but i have an idea from what i listened). And that worries me a lot.

@Maria

Well the strategies employed by Rubin and Valencia were very different and both worked for different reasons. Neither are new and both caused us problems last season as well. Valencia pressed us hard, they challenged us for midfield dominance and they tried to put us off our passing game. Rubin just parked it for 90 minutes and caught two lucky breaks.

The way i see it the Valencia game was more to do with us playing badly than them finding the solution to playing us. As I mentioned in my previous post they are not the first team to press us and succeed but it has only ever worked when we were not playing well (Eg Lyon, AM last season). No team has used this tactic successfully when we are on form, and some of the best teams have tried.

What worries me more is when teams park the bus because then we are relying on either being extremely efficient in front of goal or just getting lucky. Neither of which happened against Rubin. It is a problem we have had since last season and it is a problem we must find a solution to. On a positive note it seems like we are creating more chances against teams that use this tactic. Rubin played an exceptional game last night, they defended really well, so much so that I have to say i think they deserved a draw (not a win though They got lucky in the sense that the post was there when they needed it and they got their breaks when they needed them (their first goal REALLY made the game tough for us), but defensively all credit to them.

Maybe some will call me optimistic but I am not worried, not in the slightest. We had these types of performances last season too and I remember coming here and seeing all sorts of panic/doom and gloom and I remember trying to be the optimist back then too. Lets see how the team reacts now. If they fail to react then I might start to worry...

Well , the good thing that the bastareds lost too at home and they look more shaky than ever specially at the back ,Casillas and Dida looked like clowns today and people still blame Valdes and want a replacement for him , rubbish .
I don’t see how Ibra got only 5.5 ,in my opinion he was our only decent player on the pitch along side Pique and Abidal ,it is not his mistake that his shot hit the bar and people were not passing and making use of him ,he did set up to chances for Messi and Iniesta and scored from almost half a chance.
Our need for enforcement during January looks like a must now specially with the CAF coming on just as someone said .Those players are humans not bloody robots and they sure need a fine rest, to be honest yesterday was the worse game from Andres Iniesta since I don’t know when ,his passing and speed were horrible and he certainly could use a match off ,same goes to Marquez ,Bojan and Alves .
One last thing ,I m sure everyone saw Zlatan free kick ,hopefully he will be our main free kicks taker coz Mr.Alves has been absolutely horrible .

LINK
Ibra's free kick against Florentina.

Alves free kicks much like Roberto Carlos never amount to anything...

Well Hilal, I won't go into a war of details about every game of last season (I would certainly lose it), but we have a very different feeling about the games I did mention as well as the ones you did mention. One thing is you cannot tell me we had our heads not focussed against Valencia last year (what whith Madrid hot on our heels at this moment) and then give me Basel as a succesful bus like this was an important game for us. Speaking of Basel, as you mention them as a decent bus, I remember they played the same way in Switzerland and we had four beautiful goals after 25 minutes (that was the game where I realized this Barça team really had something special in it).
You "would love an example of a half decent "bus" we destroyed whith ease", well this will be difficult as the point is, if we destroyed it whith ease, then it certainly wasn't half decent, but I don't think that all the goleadas we gave last year were against teams who decided to play ambitiously.
You say we are only vulnerable to teams putting pressure on us when we have a bad day, I think we can say too that we have problems against teams just seating back only when we are poor. Again I didn't see the game tuesday, but the reports I've read generally don't imply we were particularly good. The best exemple is Chelsea, we had a nightmare day there, barely completing a pass, and we would have been far more dangerous if Alves just had given 5 good crosses on the ten he had before the 93rd minute. This point on the form of the day is not one way.
I believe we will agree to disagree, but my opinion is that Valencia's way is the most dangerous for us: pack the midfield, use your wings to annihilate ours, thus forcing us to attack through the center, win the ball back and go straight to the goal taking advantage of our high line of defense. Sure it's dangerous, but on a good day we will find a breach in any bus. The point is I think we don't have had many good days up to now this season.

I'll have to keep it short and sweet as I've got PC problems.

The game was simply POOR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even the best team in the world can have off days.

@ Eswardo
Leave Hilal alone. There's nothing xenophobic about his statement.

A forgettable game to cap a forgettable week . I don't know if there are any positives to take out of this game .
We were once again exposed for lack of productivity on the left flank .
Pedro is just a temporary stop gap measure . He is NOT a Barça quality LW .
Abidal seems content with his tiky taky routine in our half but he is totally useless going forward . This makes it much easier for our opponents to just concentrate on our right flank(Messi&Alves) .

Messi seems to be worn out . I think he needs a break but Guardiola and Maradona would prefer to work him into the ground game in and game out . Alves needs to get his act together and show his form from last season . Bitching and complaining to the referee and diving is NOT going to do it .

We were unlucky not to score more goals but I think we are still on target to qualify along with Dynamo Kiev .

The best news of the week was the fall of the Evil Empire at their own place to an average AC Milan side .
Music to my ears !!

@ Fred

I agree that both tactics work against us, i guess we will have to agree to disagree as to which is more effective. On our day we can beat anybody, but i just think when a team parks the bus luck can help them, it doesnt always, but it can. When we are on form and a team tries to play us i dont think even luck will help them, maybe divine intervention! Thats the difference for me...

Either way we have not been playing our best this season, that is for sure, but i am positive we will get there eventually.

i have no problem with anybody taking the freekicks, i believe the team will make the best decision....if ibra always scores his during training, he'l def hv been the one taking it. ibra's freekicks are also more about probability...

I would rather see Xavi take the short ones and Ibrahimovic the long range variety . Alves should NOT attempt to take any free kicks of any kind !!