Striker Hunt Is Barcelona’s Biggest Area of Concern Ahead of 2016/17 Season

The area of concern that is getting the most column inches in the Catalunya media is the battle between Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Claudio Bravo for Barcelona’s main goalkeeping position.

“Earthquake Ter Stegen,” was Sport’s headline (in Spanish) on Wednesday, with the newspaper claiming that the goalkeeper has told Barcelona he has an offer on the table from Manchester City.

However, it isn’t the problem that needs to be solved most urgently. Even though both goalkeepers have threatened to leave the club if they don’t get the nod from Luis Enrique, per Catalunya Radio (h/t Sport), Barcelona will be left with a world-class goalkeeper no matter what happens.

As back-up they would have Jordi Masip, a player who Luis Enrique always backs when speaking about his goalkeeping options, so it wouldn’t prove to be too troublesome.

Losing Ter Stegen would sting, because he has the quality and potential to be the club’s goalkeeper for the next 10 years, but for the time being Bravo is still extremely reliable.

The bigger problem is at the other end of the field. That’s not something many would say, considering Barcelona have three of the best strikers in the world, in Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez.

But what they want is the fourth. They need a forward who can play back-up to those three while being good enough to come in and make a difference on a regular basis.

Pedro Rodriguez played that role until the start of last season when he went to Chelsea. Since then, there’s been a gap.

Luis Enrique tried Munir El Haddadi and Sandro Ramirez. The latter didn’t cut it and was sent packing to Malaga, while the former is still around and looked half decent by the end of last season. However, that is not enough of an option to be a reliable back-up for one of the MSN trident.

This is particularly true of the “S” part of the trio. While new midfield signing Denis …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com