Team Focus: Barcelona's Failings

In just four days Barcelona have kissed goodbye to the two major trophies they won last year and whilst their first home defeat since September 2010 to Real Madrid, followed by a barely believable elimination by Chelsea from the Champions League 3-2 on aggregate, came as a shock, some of the factors behind those failures have been visible for some time.

Victory in the Clásico has all but sealed Real's first title in four years, but where Barca really lost control of their crown was earlier in the season with draws away at Real Sociedad, Valencia, Athletic Bilbao, Espanyol and Villarreal plus defeats at Getafe and Osasuna.

Two connected themes run through that run of results and the two defeats and a draw from the three biggest games of the season that have inflicted so much pain on Catalunya this week.

The first is a failure to take their chances. It is no surprise to learn that Barcelona trail only Real Madrid as having the second most shots on goal in La Liga this season. They are the second top-scorers with 97 compared to Real's record breaking 109 and Madrid's style of play is much more direct. Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, has taken 54 more shots than Leo Messi and 44% of Madrid's strikes come from outside the box compared to just 33% for Barca.

The logic behind Barca's death by a thousand cuts, or even a 100 Xavi passes, is the idea that when they do create an opening it should be a clearer one. However, Real's record of goals per shots on target (109 from 271) at 40% is marginally better than the Catalans 37% (97 from 262).

Moreover, from the games in which points were lost away from home listed above, that ratio falls even further to 20% (9 from 44).

The raw statistics from the two-legs against Chelsea are frankly ridiculous, 47 shots on goal compared to 11, 12 on target to the Londoners 4 (from which they scored three goals) and an average of 80.5% of possession.

However the figure that tells the story of Barca's season is that there were no goals for Leo Messi.

That is the other correlation to those failings on the road this season. The Argentine has now not scored in three consecutive games for the first time this season. As pointed out here in February (Barca's Away Day Blues), Barca's reliance on Messi was threatening to derail their bid for silverware unless others started to take more responsibility; in fact the pendulum swung even further in the opposite direction.

Much has been made of Pep Guardiola's changes to what seemed like the perfect formula from the end of last season. The switch to three at the back has caused problems, but the single biggest difference has been the loss of David Villa and Pedro Rodriguez through a combination of injury and loss of form.

The MVP trio of Messi, Villa and Pedro managed 98 goals between them last season. Pedro has scored 45 in his last two campaigns, Villa over 200 for the past 10 seasons with four different clubs.

Their replacements, Cesc Fabregas and Alexis Sanchez, at first seemed to be more than capable ones and indeed added even more variety to Barca's play.

Fabregas scored 14 times in his first 21 appearances after returning to the club, including in the 3-1 win over Real at the Bernabeu in December and in the finals of the European Super Cup and World Club Championships.

The Chilean meanwhile also scored in that Clásico victory, had 11 in his first 25 and brought the much needed "verticality" Guardiola often spoke of.

However, their influence has dived since the turn of the year. The former Arsenal captain has scored just once in 22 games in all competitions since early January and Sanchez has just three in his last 14.

After defeat to Osasuna in February, Messi scored in every single game he played in bar one (the 0-0 draw in Milan before scoring twice in the decisive 3-1 win in the return-leg) until the European champions rocked up at Stamford Bridge last week.

That was a tally of 28 goals in 14 games. The World Player of the Year wasn't just carrying his side, he was masking the under performance of a number of his teammates and, most crucially of all, the unfilled gap left by the absence of Villa.

It is ironic that just a few weeks after Milan were disposed of and many ridiculed how Guardiola could ever have thought Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the right fit, Tuesday night demonstrated exactly why the Swede was so sought after by the Barca boss. His signing was preceded by similar Chelsea resistance in the 2009 semi-final and convinced those in the Barcelona hierarchy that Villa's signing wasn't the priority.

The call for a recruitment of a plan B is reactionary. Like three years ago, Barca don't need a target man, they need El Guaje.