The Morning After: Jornada 12

Well, the long and the short of it is that as footballing weekends go, that was about as dismal as they come for Barça. The curse of the orange shirt struck again as we lost 2-0 to Getafe with a gutless display of nothingness whilst Reial Madrid continue to rub our noses in it by playing sexy futbol. Robinho put in an impressive display as Mallorca repeated their feat of last season's final round by getting our hopes up only for Madrid to snatch the three points that now see them 4 points ahead of Barça. To cap it all off Vila-real won to move into 2nd place and leave Barça in 3rd.

A defeat is something that we as football fans can take, in fact we would readily accept a string of defeats were they fire and brimstone affairs chock full of sexy futbol and heart and passion from the boys in blaugrana, only that's not what we're getting right now. What happens when Barça go away from home is that the team really doesn't turn up. Millions of people from around the globe tune in to see Barça play and are then confronted with a display which is limper than a 3 day old wet lettuce leaf. At the Camp Nou the fans are treated to great football, assured displays and more often than not, victory. It seems, however, that once the team get on the plane and head off to various parts of Spain that there is no plan B from the management when teams come at us a little more and stop us from playing our usual game. We lack the movement from the forwards and midfielders and most crucially we lack the speed of passing to open teams up. In short, we're bloody average once we leave home. So average in fact that we draw 0-0 with Rangers, lose to Getafe and can't beat struggling Valladolid. Now that's average!

The view of many now is that Frank's time is running out, indeed a defeat in our next away game against fellow Catalans Espanyol may just bring the curtain down on an illustrious era at the Camp Nou for Rijkaard. The home form is papering over the cracks of the problems this team really has in terms of character and commitment because that is what is tested during away games and that is what we don't appear to have.