How to Build a Better Team (and have fun doing it!) Part 3

By: Isaiah | June 2nd, 2008

So here’s the final installment in the on-going series on Barcelona’s offseason moves. So far I’ve covered the defense and the midfield, which leaves just the forwards to think about. There are some moves to make sure we consider when thinking about the forwards and they are:

Gianluca Zambrotta has joined AC Milan (the Italian Evil Empire…Il Impero Malvagio?) on a rumored 9million euro transfer fee that could rise to 11million depending on performance and appearances. I’ll write up a goodbye at some point this week. I’ve actually enjoyed his time in Barcelona and will probably miss some of his defensive skills…but not that pass to Scholes. Certainly I won’t miss that.

Obviously we’ve added Seydou Keita and Gerard Pique. You can read my welcome to them here.

There’s always the question of Giovani Dos Santos, who the press is counting as one of Tottenham’s players already, but that’s not official yet (a quick check to Tottenham’s website confirms this) so I won’t say goodbye yet.

So, on to the insanity that is our front line. Here is the list of current forwards: Samuel Eto’o, Thierry Henry, Bojan Krkic, Santiago Ezquerro, and Eidur Gudjohsen. A lot of people include Ronaldinho, Messi, and Dos Santos in the list of forwards, but I’ve covered them in midfield section as I think they are tactically deployed farther back than those liste above.

The way that most people see the forward line being deployed (4-3-3) only uses one true forward (the center forward), but Rijkaard used Henry as a left winger for most of the season. When Eto’o was injured, Bojan got a lot of starts in the middle, but he’s more of the winger type due to his size (5′7″); Gudjohnsen played more as a (un)creative midfielder; and Ezquerro was, well, not very good no matter where he was played. Eto’o is the main central striker, followed by Henry, both of whom have the size and experience to deserve a start over Bojan, as sacrilegious as that may be to a lot of cules.

Bojan is a fantastic talent, but he isn’t the answer to our goalscoring “problems” from the last season. The answers to those questions are being found in the defense, where we’re poised to overspend on Martin Caceres — and before the masses cry out that Caceres is a talent worth the risk, consider the above-stated deal for Zambrotta: is Caceres that much better than Zambrotta?* — and we have added Gerard Pique. A lot of criticism was aimed at the lack of headed goals, but it wasn’t headed goals exactly, it was set-piece goals that were the issue. Part of that was the lack of a true freekick taker once Ronaldinho was dropped, but a lot of it was the lack of danger once the ball got into the box. A corner kick was as good as a lost ball and a freekick either had to be scored directly or it too was just a wasted opportunity. With a tall player like Pique on the field, the team should have enough size to change the dynamic in the final third, thus allowing skill players like Messi to get more awkward rebounds (not to mention the goals scored). This is not necessarily true if a tall forward is employed to smash in crosses from the wing.

Samuel Eto’o is the best speedster striker available to Barcelona — and I would argue he is the best such striker in the world at the moment and Barcelona doesn’t even have to pay an outrageous transfer fee for him — so there is no reason whatsoever to think of transferring him just because he has a big mouth. He will continue to score goals at a ludicrous pace, which is just what we need. What made Barcelona “predictable” towards the end of the year was, in my opinion, a lack of tactical flexibility brought about by Rijkaard’s odd dedication to keeping Henry on the left wing.

And that brings me to Thierry Henry: obviously he is talented, obviously his experience is helping Bojan, and, most obviously, he can still score goals from distance. However, he is not a left winger and he doesn’t play like one, which limits the speed and versatility of the midfield flow. With all of our eggs in one tactical basket, it was only a matter of time before teams caught on. My proposition is — and always has been — to use Henry as a super sub. I know that that doesn’t work for him, but there’s no other way to really make a 4-3-3 work. A 4-4-2 works even less because it would require pushing Messi further back in order to carve space for Eto’o and Henry up front, which is not something I would be willing to give up for all the tea in China. Or in my girlfriend’s apartment for that matter. My point is that there’s a lot of tea there. Wait, no, you’re confusing me. My point is that Messi should be deployed in the same area he’s been deployed in recently, not in a more defensive role that would minimize his chances of taking on defenders one at a time.

Would a different striker be any better than Eto’o or Henry, though? The rumors have recently suggested a myriad of names, from Adebayor to Ibrahimovic to Guiza. Of those three, I am most impressed by Adebayor (fortunately for me since he’s the one that’s still potentially on the market), but none of those players would fit into the existing system in any seamless way. Guiza would be the most likely to adapt the fastest, but it would be shades of the Henry situation all over again, with a star striker coming in from somewhere else to solve problems that aren’t really there. Eto’o may be outspoken, but he’s a goalscoring machine and you always, always keep goalscorers around until their mouths outweigh their productivity. I am not at all convinced that Henry can match Eto’o’s scoring in the middle — in fact I’m pretty certain he can’t get anywhere near — and with a true left-winger, no one will be better than Eto’o. Think of the Ronaldinho-in-his-prime numbers that Eto’o was putting up as space was constantly being created for him to squeeze into with his 6th sense for where that space was going to end up appearing.

It is easy to say that any capable forward would score gaudy numbers when provided with exemplary service, but that’s not necessarily true. Eto’o has shown himself capable of scoring large numbers of goals while fronting a team that isn’t in a scoring groove and doesn’t create much space (if you dispute the goalscoring issues, I can understand, but 15 of the team’s 76 goals were scored in the final 4 games.**); imagine what Eto’o can do while fronting a team with a well-rounded approach.

My basic thought is this: don’t fix what ain’t broke. Eto’o has a big mouth and a big ego, but so do all of the aforementioned strikers. Henry is no selfless saint, of course, and Eto’o has proven himself worthy of Barcelona’s faith. He came back from injury and served a month with the ACN, yet he outscored all other players in the league. He scored at a goal-per-game clip, yet that’s not good enough? He scored more goals-per-appearance than pichichi Dani Guiza, yet that’s not good enough? Sure, we could cash in on him, but we don’t need the money — at the moment we could use the kharma or whatever you want to think of it as. We have a very, very solid frontline, so let’s get them working together better, rather than tinkering with who they are. I don’t know any more than anyone else about whether or not Eto’o will react favorably or negatively to Guardiola’s taskmaster style, but there’s only one way to find out and that’s by keeping him.

I also want to keep Henry, though not because I think he’ll do that much good, but rather because we already have him, so let’s use him where he’s most effective: in the middle. As a sub. I’ll never get my way, of course, and I may even end up watching a Barcelona team fronted by Henry rather than Samu. If that happens, you can rest assured that Kevin and I will duel to the death. Or at least disagree constantly on this forum.

Another, as-of-yet undiscussed option is to bring in a solid striker and dump both Gudjohnsen and Ezquerro rather than getting rid of Eto’o. Why do we have to get rid of Eto’o? It was depth at all levels that allowed ManU to win their double, so why should we be afraid of this same strategy? If we get a solid striker (if not necessarily a superstar), how would that hurt us? It would allow us to play hard in cup games, thus resting our primary strikers, as well as get those new strikers some more time gelling with the rest of the team. Ezquerro is such a liability that we can’t risk playing him even when we’re taking on our first round Cup opponent. Gudjohnsen has never found his stride in La Liga and it’s time he moved on, even though I do actually believe in his skills. It’s just that he’s frustrated my positive view of him so many times that I’m running out of patience. Even my girlfriend knows to cringe when he’s on the field and that tells you something. We also have enough Barca B talent to fill in for those two players. I mean, what, are they going to be worse? Score fewer times?

Enough out of me. What think you?

*and yes, Caceres is 21 while Zambrotta is 31, but Zambrotta is a proven entity on the international stage, while Caceres has represented his country just 5 times. I understand that the age difference is huge and that Caceres has a large “upside” but the risk being taken on Caceres would be far higher than what is being taken on Pique, who is the same age and has the same upside (in fact, probably has a higher upside). [As I wrote this, Sport just reported that Caceres is signed and that Gio will net only €6million. If the latter bit is true, that's absolutely unjustifiable. Absolutely ridiculous. Caceres is worth 3 times as much as Gio!? No. I'm sorry, but no. Sport, by the way, is suggesting €17million for Caceres. Maybe I should retitle this post "How to Build a Better Team (and get screwed doing it)...]

**Just to get some stats into this, the 76 goals the team scored in the league averages out to exactly 2 goals per game. Not particularly bad at all as those 76 is the second best in the league, but there were stretches (and in particular a 4 game stretch) when few or no goals were scored. Those 15 goals were 1/5 of the total goals scored in rough 1/10 of the games. So yeah, there were issues, but they weren’t suggestive of the need for an entirely new line, merely a few tactical changes.