5 players who don't deserve to play at Barcelona anymore

#1 Lionel Messi

Time for Lionel Messi to move on from Barcelona?

Before you light up your torches and pick up your pitchforks, hear me out!

The previous four players I named were on the list because they do not deserve to put on a Barcelona shirt. In Messi's case, it is the other way round - the shirt doesn't deserve his name on the back anymore.

16 years at the club is a long time. And he's won everything in that time - winning a total of 29 trophies and countless individual honours. Yet, it does seem like his time at the Camp Nou is nearing an end.

The 30-year-old is yet to put pen to paper on a new contract and has been stalling for quite some time. In January he will be free to negotiate a deal with another club and sign a pre-contract. In the summer of 2018 he could leave for free.

The club has been in disarray for quite some time and with former presidents going to jail, directors resigning over the Catalonia crisis, and the future of the club being forced to move to PSG in a record-breaking €222m deal. Messi had no idea Neymar was leaving the club until the very last day of their pre-season tour.

Barcelona have a great team but they do not have a great squad to challenge for serious trophies anymore. Of course, they are top of the league because it has all been down to Messi dragging them over the line time and again (12 goals in La Liga so far - the next best player has only three).

Just like he did in the lean years after Pep Guardiola's exit.

Barcelona is now a club that has been unable to provide the Argentine forward with the tools required to win trophies on a consistent basis. They cannot keep rebuilding the team around Messi after he has done so much for the club on and off the pitch. And when they do try, they have failed with some very strange transfers.

Messi knows it too - which is why he has delayed on renewing his contract. He no longer sees Barcelona as the club it used to be; thanks to the new administration that has been hugely unpopular among not only the fans but the players as well.

The only thing that will see Messi stay is if the likes of club president Josep Bartomeu are replaced. But even then it will take a season or two to repair the damage caused by the current board that made a number of questionable transfers.

No great player should be held hostage by his own club's inefficiency. Which is why Barcelona will be sweating over Messi's final decision as, this time, he holds all the cards.