Team's Future: Focus on Structure and Defense

The questions around this team’s future are no longer just about style. They are about structure, concentration, and what happens next in the transfer market.

The coach did not hide from any of it.

He admitted that talks about reinforcing the squad have been ongoing for some time, and not just in passing. Meetings with Deco, Bojan and his technical staff have framed the months since the last window closed. The plan is clear: if the opportunity arises when the market reopens in a few weeks, they will try to act.

Nothing is guaranteed. The message, though, was unmistakable — they are actively looking at how to improve the team.

That search is driven by a familiar problem. Defending. Or more precisely, how the entire side behaves without the ball.

For the coach, the issue does not start with the back four. It starts much higher up the pitch. He reminded everyone that even the centre-forward has defensive duties, that every player is part of the first line of resistance. Lose the ball cheaply, and the whole structure collapses.

The recent defeat to Real Madrid provided the latest, and most painful, evidence. Possession was squandered in dangerous areas. Transitions were messy. Focus slipped. Against this level of opponent, those errors are punished.

“It happens to us often,” he admitted, and that is the line that will sting inside the dressing room. This is no one-off. It is a pattern.

From there, the problems ripple backwards. When the team is forced to defend deep, the basics have to be perfect: tight marking in the box, awareness of runners, aggression in duels. Instead, he saw opponents left with too much space, situations that had been rehearsed on the training ground unfolding in ways that betrayed those sessions.

They work on it. They talk about it. They drill it. Yet on matchday, the gaps still appear.

That tension now frames the weeks ahead. The staff will keep hammering home the demands on the training pitch, insisting on smarter use of the ball and sharper concentration in their own area. Upstairs, the conversations with Deco and Bojan will continue, the recruitment plan refined and reworked.

If the market offers a solution, they will be ready to move. If it does not, the answer will have to come from within — from a group being told, in no uncertain terms, that defending is no longer someone else’s job.