Almeria 2-2 Barca, or, Did I say "Thrash Almeria?"

An unexpected los...er, I mean, draw...this week has brought an interesting question to the fore: Are Barca a good, verging on great, team at home, but a mediocre team away? One needs to look no further than this wonderful blog to see that while Barca are capable of turning out some stunning performances within its fortress, they struggle to produce the same quality outside in the unadoring cold of the road.

Some will say that the Camp Nou pitch is so good, that all other pitches in the world destroy Barca's flow with all the long grass and holes every other square-foot. Whatever. If you ask me, this game came down to a bit of exhaustion, a bit of jadedness, and you know what, a bit of curious coaching decisions.

I am as big a supporter of Pep Guardiola as you will find, and as recent posts will indicate, I am not at all against the direction he seems to be taking the team into, tactically and when it comes to personnel. But in this match, Barca looked on the ropes for a long, long time, looking sluggish as a team and, for the most part, individually. The team went down once, ground out a fairly lucky equalizer (not the first one lately, either), then went down again, still looking slow and relatively tame.

Note the lineup: Valdes, Alves, Puyol, Milito, Maxwell, Yaya, Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro, Messi, and Ibrahimovic. That is just a suspension, an injury, and an I-don't-know-what's-up-with-Henry away from last year's tour-de-force. Yet, Guardiola tried--and commendably, at first--to try his new tactics with Yaya instead of Busquets. It was not quite working.

Did it really have to take a sending-off to pull Iniesta back into the midfield and have the team play the way they knew? With Yaya, last year's rock of the midfield trio, in the squad, why play the 433-cum-424/4231 experiment that Busquets is central to? At half-time, with the grip on the game tenuous at best, could Pep have not said, "Right, decent showing of the new tactics--now let's do the Xavi-Iniesta-Yaya thing, move the damn ball around, and put Almeria in their place"?

It was not all the manager, though, who should have known better than to get sent off with his team down. It was most of last year's legends whose performances factored into the draw. No analysis of important Barca players in a game should begin with anyone else but Xavi Hernandez, who just was not the engine that the team needs him to be. He looked to be lacking barrels of mental sharpness--his passes were inconsistent, and his movement did not involve himself enough and allow him to take a hold of the game. Gone, for the most part, were the one-touch passes that kept the ball moving, as almost every one of his passes seemed to take moment after agonizing moment to consider and execute, successful or not. Did having only one midfield partner, and one that tends to stay behind the attack, give him more to think about than usual? Probably. But most of all, he played lethargically, without urgency, without the usual conviction.

His slowness set the tone for the team, as the story of the first half was possession at the back. Xavi had his good moments, everyone had their good moments--but somewhere along the line, someone scuffed off a poor pass or lost the ball cheaply somewhere in the field. Xavi's hesitancy led to hesitancy all over the field, and the ball never really got moving. Sometimes the team moved the ball quickly from right to left, from left to right; other times, they dribbled and turned, made a back-pass, or lost the ball one way or another. Defensively, the whole team did not track back as one far too often. Fingers will point to Alves for giving Puyol more work than he needed, but when that happened, and when Puyol got beaten, where were the midfielders on too many occasions? Inconsistency and slow speed of play marked a very uninspired game.

Like Xavi, almost everyone who showed last year that they could, did not. For some players, it was also partly because of tactics. Iniesta, playing as a left-forward for most of the game, looked uninspired. In that position, his currency is the ability to dribble his way out of tight situations, and in most games he produces some magic a few times against the sideline, but he could not in this game. As long as he depends on his dribbling in the final third, as long as his final balls are not-quite-there, as long as he does not score goals or even take shots most of the time, he will not be very good in that role.

Other players will not find their excuses in tactics. Between tracking back too late, too often, getting caught out of position, as well as with trademarked-loose distribution, trademarked-inaccurate crosses, and one trademarked-exaggeration on the floor, Alves showed off a lot of what we hate him for with precious little of what we love him for. Loads of involvement and flash in his game was more than counter-balanced by the wastefulness that Barca fans hate to call predictable. Perhaps he is playing his way back from injury--I hope that is the case.

Yaya was also a bit off-color. Though his passing was generally sound and his possession generally smart, last year's defensive proficiencies were as lacking as they were in the Stuttgart game. Very inconsistent was his positioning, as he was just reaching balls too late, having to make most of his tackles in the places you would not expect--anywhere but the middle of the field in front of the defense. More noticeable was his ineffectiveness in imposing himself. For such a historically intimidating player, if not technically excellent in his tackles and interceptions (though often he is this), to see him lose so many physical battles in the air was baffling. People seem to be pointing to Puyol for the 12th-minute goal concession, and with reason--but that goal began with Yaya holding onto his man, looking to be on him, but allowing him to escape and get his head to the ball. Perhaps he is shaking off some rust--I hope that is the case, if he remains with the team. I would hate to see him go.

The other concession effectively started with Yaya as well. Sure, Maxwell gave away the ball cheaply upfield, but then Almeria moved right through the middle, as Yaya ran alongside the play. Also like the opener, it ended, obviously, with Puyol at the scene of the crime with blood all over his hands, but this time, it was for real. An own goal is not something you see often from El Capitan, but it happened, and it symbolized another sluggish, inconsistent, and, well, slow performance from another of the team's staples. Did Valdes call him off? Should he have done so louder if he did? Was Puyol listening? We will never know. What we do know is that if it was not for that practically once-in-a-lifetime mistake, Barca would have scrapped out a narrow and only arguably deserved win.

Was it really any surprise that our best performers were the relative newbies, the ones that did not partake in last year's spotlight? Milito played arguably the best game in the defense, with superb reading of Almeria's passes in the final third, several well-executed tackles that came from that reading, and flashes of Beckenbaur-esque forays and passes forward. His cross-field- and long passes were not that bad, either. Busquets, when he came on for Yaya for the last 20 minutes of the game, really showed his form by playing a near perfect game off the bench, picking off loose balls, pressuring every player that came into his zone and running them straight into one of our defenders, and passing 100%, including one Xavi-esque cross-field ball.

Pedro, though playing a supporting role throughout the game, did not put one foot wrong if I remember. His passes, when they were not adequate to keep the attack moving, were excellent to put the ball in a wholly unexpected place. Especially after the team went a man down and he was allowed to play more strictly in the left-forward position, he showed flashes of playing it exactly as Henry did last season. I mentioned in the last post that one of his criticisms is his inexperience that is reflected in hesitancy in final-delivery situations on the wing. Against Almeria, when he received the ball at just the right time, he had no trouble in beating his man and racing to the touchline to put the knife in. Once, he opted to pass the ball back to Xavi, when Alves was wide-open in the middle. Another time, he delivered a dangerous one to the far-post, which came back through an Almeria header for Messi's second goal. With a bit more confidence--as if he does not have a ton already--he gets a couple of assists.

The exception to the rule, of course, was Messi, who really had an exceptional individual game. Almeria could not deal with his heroic runs, and, unlike most teams, could not deal with his foolish runs most of the time, either. They were also terrorized by tiny, chipped flicks of the ball to nearby teammates that Messi cheekily pulled off again, and again, and again. His passes were right-on, too, as he would consistently hold the ball just enough to draw two or three players, before giving to someone like Pedro, through whom he could have had one obvious assist. He looked so threatening throughout the game, and really deserved both goals of the type--cool, but just a tad lucky. If Ibrahimovic played half as well as Messi did, Barca would have put this game to bed quickly through sheer class at the front. Unfortunately, the big man kept bundling over his defender whenever the ball came near him, and finally the poor guy had enough of it and exaggerated some contact, which got Ibra sent off--and that is all I will say about him.

But, again, Barca only came near their full potential after he was sent off. It was not because Ibrahimovic was the wrench-in-the-gears--he was far from it. Puyol's own-goal whipped the team and the manager into shape, as they both realized that this could go down as an L. Guardiola, for his part, got on his iPhone and told Villanova to authorize the tactical changes that allowed the (old?) Xavi-Iniesta axis to run the midfield. The players, for their part, started to get the ball around the field faster. The defenders, who had until that point been far, far too content to imagine that the Valdes-Puyol-Milito axis was the key to dominance, moved the ball forward. Iniesta became much more assured in his passing, visibly relieved that he did not need to wow the crowd as the only way to do anything right. Xavi, with an attacking outlet, hesitated much less. Both of them, plus Pedro and, sometimes, Alves, coalesced around Messi to create three chances--three--right after the sending off. The fourth was the second equalizer.

More came, and to the last minute, I felt fairly comfortable that Barca could pull it out. Messi still produced some great things out of sheer drive, including a half-volley that gave Diego Alves his best save of the game. I did not know it, though. All the players that were only half-there prior to the sending off were still only 75-80% there afterward. Xavi continued to rack up passes like a collection of dull-knives. Iniesta was certainly more comfortable, but still was not playing like St. Andres. Alves dived in the box and freaked out when the ref didn't give him a penalty. In some ways, things got worse, as Maxwell began to get beaten like a gong toward the end, and Almeria returned the favor Messi did their goalkeeper by giving Milito his best, if subtle, moments. It was only when stoppage time began, and I saw six of our players still in our own half, that I knew that we would give up the lead to Real Madrid.

In a very real way, Barca did not want three points as much as Almeria wanted one. When Sergio Canales was subbed off during the Racing game a few weeks ago, four goals down in the Camp Nou, he sat on the bench, shook his head, and smiled. Almeria players, when the 2-2 stalemate consolidated itself, became visibly frustrated with one another when things did not work out. Sure, our boys looked upset--mildly--but not enough for a second title. On Sunday, they need to prove that they want this Liga against a much more formidable team than Almeria--Valencia.

This just-in: Hopefully, the fit-again, and fit-again-early, Seydou Keita will help us. Arriba!