If it wasn't obvious then, it's obvious now. Luis Enrique had got his tactics wrong, right from the start. Yes, it takes time to impose a philosophy/style, but guys, we are in December. It's time to analyze the progress report of Luis Enrique at Barcelona.

 In the beginning, the thought of  midfielders protecting the fullbacks brought joy to the millions of culés across the world. The results  aided the tactics and Luis Enrique became 'The next Pep Guardiola'. Our imagination went haywire and the culés were like ' League is already in the bag'.

 We were in a pretty good state in the league until that PSG game. It's  funny how we understand the state of the team after playing against PSG. Messidependencia was there right from the glory days, but we were under the illusion that, 'We could do without Messi' until we played against PSG at Camp Nou. Yes, we were haphazard, we were utterly clueless and then Messi came on, Pedro scored. We won and the phrase changed from 'Messi need Xavi and Iniesta' to ' Barcelona are nothing without Messi'. The second realization came in the recent CL match vs  PSG. We were completely dominated by PSG and the defense sucked to the core. The juvenile team's organisation looks more sophisticated than the one we had in that game. Midfielders failed to 'Control the match' and 'Protect the fullbacks' simultaneously.  PSG were in firm control of the match and deservedly won the match.

   
  Don't blame the manager, blame the pathetic defense screamed some. Alves sucks, Jordi Alba sucks read the twitter feed. But no one noticed that 'we didn't dominate the match and the opposition had more number of chances'. We continued to grab all three points in the league, albeit not convincingly . Then came the second big test for Enrique. It was time for El Clasico. The team selection was absurd. However pathetic Alba is at LB, you don't swap him with Mathieu against the European champions. Suarez just strolled into the starting 11 after a lengthy ban. We may understand the need to play Suarez, for whom we paid hefty amount, but picking Mathieu at LB was ludicrous. Marcelo ran riot on our right flank. In theory, the thought of midfielders protecting fullbacks was stupendous, but it didn't work at all. There was nothing, but chaos on the field. Meanwhile, Luis Enrique failed to assess the situation . The lesser teams failed to punish us in the previous games, but we paid for every mistake in the Clasico.

To summarize, we look/looked ominous
1) When the opposition sit back in the defense and hit us on break.
2) When the opposition(Quality) decide to play football.

  There is some serious problem moving forward if Enrique persists in playing our midfielders wide than usual.   Sevilla was the only exception as our midfielders played more central and Messi was at his absolute peak in that particular match. It thoroughly reflected in the scoreline. Just when things looked promising, Enrique experimented yet again, this time versus quality Valencia side. In that match, Busquets played in Xavi's Role and Mascherano played in Busquet's role and we were piss poor . Yes. we got all the three points, but we aren't going anywhere with such sort of performance as Real Madrid are thrashing teams for fun. It's just a matter of time before a much better team such as Atletico will punish us for the stupid tactical mistakes. To sum it up, there hasn't been any progress, but we started deteriorating. Just when we think things are improving, we see another style of play. As a supporters, we can just hope that Luis Enrique finds his proper template.

                                                  Derbi Barceloni

My Prediction : Barcelona 2 Espanyol 1. Goals from Messi and Suarez. Just like Newcastle vs Chelsea, there is a similar story between Barca and Espanyol. Espanyol press very well and are very well organized at the back. If they score early, our manager will panic and things get out of control and apocalypse happens at Camp Nou. So I hope we score the first goal and try to control the match like we would do in the past. It's december and still we haven't got a standard template. -_-.

Visca Barca