The Fans Blog4

Well… let’s make this one short, we already had a long week with lot of games and goals, and the last thing you need is to read a long thesis of text and numbers.

What kind of teams are we going to face this week? A humble team that Barcelona will crush with no mercy? Or a team that defeated Athletic Bilbao in San Mames and gained a draw 2-2 against Valencia?

May be a strange way to start this but I found a website listing the market value of Almeria players, the squad value is 82 Million euro, on the same site, the market value of only Messi and Henry together is that much, now how reliable these numbers are, is not my problem, probably Messi alone is worth that much, the point is: nothing acceptable less than three points, and attractive football Saturday night!

But the night is spoiled already, Pablo Piatti will not be there, he failed to get back to form on time for the game against Barcelona, which is something I was excited about, who is this guy?

Ok, he looks like Messi and lot of talks about how talented he is – and in my opinion he is definitely a talented Argentinean – but calling him “New Messi” is something I don’t like.

He made the right decision going to Almeria to play and polish his talents, rather than jumping to a giant team bench forever, Almeria had beaten Manchester United and Juventus to the signature of the Argentinean starlet The 19-year-old left Estudiantes for Almeria, and became the club’s most expensive signing in the history. Piatti won the Under-20 World Cup in 2007 alongside Atletico hero Sergio ‘Kun’ Aguerro.

So what? He is not even the most dangerous player for Almeria! Negredo! That one is definitely the threat!

In july 2007, Negredo was sold to La Liga promotees UD Almeria, with Real Madrid having the option to rebuy. He finished his season as Almeria top goal scorer with 13 goals as Almeria surprisingly finished 8th. In this season he netted 5 goals already in 6 games.

But let’s not make a big deal of it, to cause threat Almeria need to hover around Barcelona area, which is not going to be that easy, and may be not possible.

One of the characteristics of this new Barcelona is their ability to gain back the ball in a blink of an eye. To be able to hold possession while having the ball is terrifying enough for your opponent, but to be able to gain back the ball a moment after your opponent finally kidnapped it is a nightmare, it means you will be generating attacks after attacks all match long! Waves of attempts crushing the bay of the opponent defense sinking there ships and turning the net into pieces, isn’t that what’s happening recently?

I promised not to make it long, so here I list a selection I hope Pep Guardiola pick, NOTE, this is not a prediction of what he will actually select, because to do that seriously you need to be there in the training each and every day to monitor form, moral and fitness. Of course I distributed the players in an offense situation, because that’s how the game will be approached from the start, till the end.

Me, Passing the Stick

In the past few days, while promoting on facebook and some other places, I communicated with some Barcelona fans whom we don’t know here, but will be around from now and on as I hope, there was always a question about how can they express their thoughts here through posting there own side of Barcelona story, and that’s what actually encouraged me to suggest what I was thinking of since a while, and here we go…

This season is long, and it will be too much for one fan to make previews about all the games, and when I say too much I mean it will suck lot of his time – it happened with me - and it will not be fair through not giving the chance to everyone, I believe in the posts I made already I expressed myself enough, so its time to pass the stick to another player, rather than making it a marathon.

In the rambles I made, I am aware that some of you found things they agreed with, others may not be even interested, but there are two facts I am sure about, the first one is that I have a clear conscious that I tried my best, which is satisfying enough for me, and the other fact is that we are all gathered here for the love of this team, so no bad feelings for disagreements.

So, for those who were wondering how to play a role, yes including you Taurean Tito Philpott J, you need to communicate with Pep. I am back to square one. But no need to do so at the moment, enjoy the game first!