The Reality of the Situation Facing Barcelona
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At the time of writing, Barcelona have made an unbeaten start to the Spanish league season. They have 7 points to their name from a possible 9, beating Real Sociedad and Getafe at home.
The dropped points came at Athletic Bilbao, which is never an easy place to travel and the draw is not a poor result by any means.
However, the standard in La Liga does not match that of the top clubs in the Champions League. Barcelona know they are up against it this season due to the financial problems they have faced off the pitch in pre-season.
The loss of Lionel Messi to Paris Saint-Germain is clearly a massive blow and current players have been forced to take a reduction in their wages to allow new players to join the club and register for matches.
Memphis Depay looks like being a good addition but it remains to be seen if Eric García and Sergio Agüero are going to improve the team.
When Bayern Munich took the lead in the Champions League encounter on match day one of the competition, the Germans deserved their advantage.
It was a fortunate goal as the ball deflected into the back of the net but it is what the visiting team deserved as they took control of the game at the Camp Nou.
Barcelona were dropping deeper as the German champions eased their way to maximum points. Robert Lewandowski scored a second-half brace to make the final score 3-0 and perhaps the most damaging thing from a Barcelona point of view was the fact Bayern Munich clearly eased off in the latter stages.
Perhaps the most damning fact from the game was the number of shots on target by Barcelona. The home team failed to hit the target throughout the 90 minutes.
The fact Ronaldo Koeman set up his team with three central defenders will not have gone down well with the president, Joan Laporta, who likes to see Barcelona play in a 4-3-3 formation as used by Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola.
A look back at the previous three Champions League results at home for Barcelona makes grim reading. They lost 3-0 to Juventus in the final group game of the Champions League last season and were defeated 4-1 by Paris Saint-Germain in the round of 16 in February.
The 3-0 loss to Bayern Munich at the beginning of this Champions League campaign means Barcelona have scored only one goal in their last three home Champions League matches and have conceded 10 goals.
That is simply not good enough for Barcelona but underlines the current reality facing the club. Barcelona are not one of Europe’s top teams right now and it may stay that way for some time.
Koeman has a massive job on his hands and simply keeping the job is probably first on the agenda for the Dutchman right now.
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