Our problem was the defenders, especially Chygrinsky who couldn’t feed the ball to the midfield in this match. The yellow card for Chyg gave Pep the reason to bring him out and he brought in Marquez who at least can feed. But, well… it didn’t work well in the end.

Maxwell played good in the last match. While Puyol isn’t a good attacking option out of our defense, We could have used him on left back.

*http://goal.com/en/news/12/spain/2009/10/31/1596385/barcelona-boss-guardiola-happy-despite-osasuna-draw

Up front there’s no doubt we’re missing something but is it down to the forwards or to the lack of both Iniesta and Xavi doing the prompting and subtle balls behind the defence? Ibra is giving us something extra but he’s not the mover Eto’o was. Eto’o up front today and no way the Ossasuna defender brings him down – he’s through on goal. Mind you, I’ve seen Eto’o miss those ! Messi isn’t managing to find Ibra much although that may come.
I don’t think we can do without Iniesta in midfield. Xavi is the lesser for not having the quick and subtle interplay with Iniesta. If that means leaving out Keita so be it – even although I’m enjoying his play much more this year. I’m not going to contemplate leaving out a fully fit iniesta. His performances in the CL semi and final showed how much we rely on him for the fluency.

However, the main problem for me is clear – we have no pace whatsoever in our central defence. For me Marquez was a big improvement on Chygrynskiy but there’s no way I’m defending his efforts for the goal. He was beaten too easily. End of. Even after that though the cross was there to be cleared and Pique who I thought had a pretty good game again fluffed it. Abidal, who i agree (for once ! ) had a good game largely because of his safe passing isn’t an answer at CB because his positioning skills aren’t very good. He’s also far too easily beaten one on one. He was fortunate he didn’t cost us the first goal early in the game when he played the CF onside while looking across the whole line. Wrong decision luckily by the ref.

Final thought on Chygrynskiy. Twice he caused problems because of his inability to tackle with his left leg. He needs to learn that or start a card school on the bench as he’ll be spending a lot of time there.

Worrying note. On Sky we got a good view of Puyol just before the goal holding the back of his leg round about the top of his hamstring. Not good to see. It’d be interesting Kevin if you have the game on tape to see where Puyol was at the goal. My immediate thought was that Pep needed to get him off and quickly as he was hobbling about. Was he moved into the centre to save his leg and if so who was moved out to RB ?