BARCELONA - VILLARREAL | VALVERDE
Valverde: "It's not normal to have 3 penalties given against you in 6 games"
Ernesto Valverde feels that it's perfectly normal that Barça are in the spotlight: "Here, a crisis develops in next to no time".
Ernesto Valverde faced the media after this morning's training session at the Ciutat Esportiva and looked ahead to tomorrow's visit from Villarreal.
Midweek meeting at Camp Nou
The two teams who have scored the most goals this season in LaLiga meet at Camp Nou tomorrow.
Villarreal have always been a difficult side to face, and this season they've had a good start spurred on by the difficulties they had last season. They have a lot of pacy players in attack like Samu and Ekambi and very good players in the middle like Cazorla. I don't know whether it will be a game with a lot of goals or not. We will just be trying to continue along the same lines as we have been doing at home and put behind us what happened the other day.
The team's poor run is a new thing or something that has been brewing for a while?
I don't know. I think we have to focus only on this season. I don't associate last season with this one - first because in LaLiga, the results were incredible and that will be difficult to repeat. We've got to improve away from home; I think that's quite obvious.
If you attack well and are well positioned you are less likely to be caught on the break. The team who created the most chances against us was Dortmund and they didn't score against us... We'll look at the stats when we reach the halfway stage. Nor is it normal to have three penalties awarded against us in six games. It's not normal for us to have conceded four goals at home at this stage...
Constant pressure at Barcelona
Your position at the club was in question at the tail end of last season. How do you feel that you are being examined again at the start of this season?
It's been that way right from the start. Coaches are always under scrutiny. That's not something new - not for me, or anyone else. In this club, what matters are the results. If you are not getting the results then the coach will be in the firing line. That isn't a surprise. We haven't started well this season and now we have to make up lost ground. We have to get ourselves out of this situation just like we did when we were in a rut last year.
Sergio Ramos was asked about Barça's situation yesterday and replied that every time a big club loses, it's a 'crisis'. Is it too premature to be talking about a crisis at Barcelona?
That's how the football world is. It's not something which has as much to do with us as it does for the media. Suddenly, in the space of three days, a crisis can spring up out of nowhere. The only way for people to keep calm and remain relaxed is by winning two games on the trot. If there's no crisis, they'll create one very quickly. It's part of the show that football is.
In the team's away games, Griezmann has been invisible. Is it a question of adaptation or the position he's playing in?
He's played as a centre-forward and out wide on the wing and it's a fair point that we have been struggling in attack away from home. But that's not because of Griezmann, Ansu or Carles Pérez. It's something more universal. Forwards need to enter the game and be decisive.
Thin line between victory and defeat
Why do you think Barça are in this situation?
Why are we in this situation? Because we haven't won. When you find the net and your opponent doesn't, everything goes in your favour. When the opposite happens, you don't win. I'm not seeing our rivals creating loads of chances against us, it's more about the ones we're generating and capitalising on them. But that's just my point of view.
Does it worry you that Real Madrid are four points ahead of Barça?
I worry about my team, that's the only thing that concerns me. Madrid is a great team, a great rival and at the moment they are ahead of us. It's nothing new.