Barcelona have thrown away their advantage at the top of La Liga and now face an uphill battle to retain their title.
The Blaugrana looked an old and broken side in their 0-0 draw with Sevilla, capable of solid defending and little else. Creatively it was a stagnant pool of nothingness and felt like something of a culmination for where the club have been headed this season. Or perhaps a second culmination, after the club somehow managed to draw 0-0 with Slavia Prague back in November.
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This is where all the bad transfers have led. All the times they ignored the warning signs and retained the services of Ernesto Valverde. All the youth-team players they shunted out for a quick profit instead of developing into credible first-team squad members.
Barcelona are a club with many, many problems. They need some surgical work done in the summer transfer market. Not a complete overhaul, but two or three players who are exactly what is needed, two or three to elevate the squad back to the very top of the game.
But they can’t do that before the season ends, and there’s still a league title to try for as well as a Champions League to contest in August. So what can Barcelona do before the transfer window opens? What tactical tweaks can they try in order to give the side the spark they haven’t had for a while now? From the obvious to the ludicrous, we’ve come up with a list of ideas. Continue reading