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Eight games into the season and Barcelona are still battling for consistency both in La Liga and in the UEFA Champions League. Ronald Koeman’s reign as manager started on an impressive note but the pace has fallen in recent weeks.
The Catalan giants have lost just twice thus far, against Gefate and bitter rivals Real Madrid, but their overall results have simply not been good enough.
Barcelona currently find themselves in 12th position on the league table, eight points behind Zinedine Zidane’s Real Madrid. Even more worrying is the fact that the Catalans are still yet to find their ideal starting XI.
Koeman has constantly changed his line-ups for games and it is beginning to hurt the team. Barcelona have rarely played consecutive games with the same starting line-up this season.
After an impressive outing in the UEFA Champios League midweek which saw the Blaugrana defeat Juventus 2-0, the Dutchman opted for a different line-up for Saturday’s La Liga clash against Deportivo Alaves.
Against Juventus, Miralem Pjanic started in midfield alongside Frenkie de Jong, while Pedri was also handed a starting role on the left side of attack, as Ansu Fati was relegated to the bench.
Despite comfortably winning against the Italian champions, Koeman tweaked his line-up for the Alaves clash, opting to bench the impressive Pjanic for Sergio Busquets, who is clearly past his best.
Fati also returned to the starting line-up to take Pedri’s place. This constant changing of personnel has disrupted the telepathy and consistency of the Barcelona players.
It is no secret that the more players play together, the more they understand each other better. Little doubt, therefore, that Alaves had a field day against Barcelona, holding them to a 1-1 draw on Saturday.
The result means that the Catalans have now failed to win any of their last four league games, which has allowed Real Madrid to pull away at the summit of the La Liga table.
"I wasn't happy with the first half. I made three changes because I wasn't happy and there were some players on a yellow card,” Koeman said after the Alaves game, as quoted by Goal.
"If you criticised me the other day for making changes too late, today I made changes at half-time. I wasn't happy with our first half and there were people on the bench with the capability of scoring. I wanted to change things to win the game," he added.
The Dutchman may have made early changes in the game, but the main let-down was his decision to disrupt the flow of the team by once again changing his starting line-up. Barcelona should hope that this won't last much longer or the club might be in trouble.
