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    Tuesday, August 30, 2016

    Luis Enrique refreshes Barcelona's fringe players





     Barcelona have had an incredibly active transfer window, signing several new players and letting many go, but they have not bought or sold many players who will be or who were an essential part of Luis Enrique's starting XI.


    Instead, the transfer activity has been focussed on the backups and youth teamers with scarce hope of breaking through to the first-team.
    As a result of this refreshing of the team's backups, Luis Enrique believes he has 'the best squad' since he took over as coach, something that it became apparent he did not have when injuries and dips in form left Barcelona exposed last spring.

    Now, however, they have Paco Alcacer backing up their front three, Denis Suarez and Andre Gomes supporting the midfield, Lucas Digne and Samuel Umtiti providing cover in defence and Jasper Cillessen backing up Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

    In order to afford these additions and to make room in the squad, the Blaugrana have had to clear out some of the previous squad players, leading to 13 departures this summer - the second most made in one summer over the past decade, after the 15 ahead of 2014/15.

    Five of this summer's exits were simply loan deals, while eight of the players to depart were transferred on a permanent basis.

    Most of the deals made perfect sense from the Catalan club's point of view, while even the more controversial exits of Claudio Bravo, Dani Alves, and Munir El Haddadi had some logic to them as ter Stegen can finally take over the No. 1 spot that he had been due to inherit, Alves's high salary frees up space elsewhere, andMunir's exit enabled Alcacer's arrival.

    Youth graduates Marc Bartra and Alen Halilovic have brought in not insignificant transfer fees, while the exits of Douglas, Adriano, Alex Song and Thomas Vermaelen made sense given how little playing time each of the players could have expected to receive.

    Only time will tell whether or not there has been a net gain from the comings and goings.


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