da fezbet： This article is part of Football FanCast’s In Numbers series, which takes a statistical look at performances, season-long form and reported transfer targets…
da prosport bet： Barcelona are currently flying pretty high across all competitions.
The Catalan giants are top of the table both in La Liga, having jumped over Real Madrid only recently, and in the Champions League, courtesy of Inter Milan giving Borussia Dortmund their first loss of the European campaign.
But despite the result finally going their way, their performances are not as convincing.
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When they faced Slavia Prague on the road, they barely got away with a narrow 2-1 victory as their performance was definitely not on the required level for a big Champions League clash and Marc-Andre ter Stegen’s heroics were once again called upon.
Even though the whole team has underperformed at times, it does feel like some of the key members of the squad have either dipped in form or are simply past their very best.
One of those individuals is definitely Sergio Busquets, their long-lasting midfield general.
And the numbers don’t lie – the Spaniard is not at his brilliant best. His passing is still pretty good as he has tallied a 90% passing accuracy in La Liga with one key pass per game under his belt.
But he’s obviously no longer that machine that can cover for the team’s blunders all the time.
Defensively, he’s only registered one interception and 2.4 tackles per game, which is not a bad figure but still a dip from his 1.5 interceptions and 2.6 tackles per game last season.
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Not to mention that he’s recorded 7.7 losses of possession per game.
What is the biggest indication of his drop of form is actually the amount of game time he’s been getting.
So far in the 2019/20 campaign, he’s tallied ten appearances across all competitions but has been in the starting XI only six times.
Not to mention that he only completed the full 90 minutes in just four of those games, suggesting that Valverde has not always been completely satisfied with his displays.
It is still early days, however, and we can’t make any big conclusions just yet. But if the stats are any indication, Busquets might slowly but surely be giving the mantle over to the likes of Arthur Melo and Frenkie de Jong.
Barcelona might truly be going through a changing of the guard and even the great Octopus of Badia is not immune to the sands of time.