Scattered thoughts.

- Completely unsustainable having Vazquez at right-back from now until May / June. Enough warning signings now. Don't wait until the season is over. Right-back situation has to be fixed now....
- ... Which means signing someone...
- .. If you don't sign someone, the most realistic (not ideal) solution is moving Fede Valverde there...
- .. Which has its own problems because he's already over-burdened with minutes
- The *actual* ideal solution may be too late to implement now: Groom Fortea / Lorenzo (months ago). That process should've been underway back at the beginning of the season. The only reason you knew Asencio was ready to play in a Clasico now is because you were *forced* to play him earlier in the season. Put it this way: If Militao had has ACL injured a week ago instead, we would've never known Asencio was good enough for the first team to play this game. How many emergencies do you need to give Fortea or Lorenzo a proper look? They could've been ready by now. 
- Asencio over Tchouameni
- Tactically, this team is completely lost, and has been for a long time. The team is still trying to press, and Barca were baiting it all game, which ripped the defense into pieces. Ancelotti fell into the trap. We can blame Vazquez, Tchouameni, and the midfielders (who were all poor), but Ancelotti also has to put this team, tactically, in a position to succeed. You know ahead of time: 1) how Barca will play; 2) what your defensive weaknesses are. How are you going to find solutions to it? How are you going to mask Vazquez as a liability? Flick, for example, has defensive weaknesses, but his solution is to mask it by 1) defending high up the pitch to limit the amount of times his high line gets tested; 2) slowing the play down to either hold the ball and / or bait the press to create transition opportunities.
- Too much over-reliance on individual brilliance. And I don't mean just regular individual brilliance. The individual brilliance that is required to cook multiple defenders and find space is generational individual brilliance. Not sustainable enough.
- Words from Ancelotti in the post-game presser, quite empty. He describes what is happenning, but doesn't convince in finding solutions. What does it actually mean that long balls weren't the plan in the first half and that the plan was 'to play'? What do these conversations behind the scene look like in training? What does it mean 'to play'? How are you preparing the team to close the channels and track Barca's midfielders? How can the team be so unprepared to match such superior positional play? Again, if this was the first time facing this Barcelona -- fine. You've been around long enough to learn from these mistakes and make the proper adjustments.