Fans 'not pleased' as Barcelona play Gerard Pique as striker for 15 minutes vs Granada

Things seem to be going from bad to worse for Barcelona as they were held to a 1-1 draw against Granada in La Liga on Monday. The Blaugrana conceded within the first two minutes thanks to a well-taken goal from Domingos Duarte. After that, it was a constant barrage of attacks from Barcelona but they were unable to break down Granada's defence until the 90th minute when a header from Ronald Araujo found its way into the back of the net.

Barcelona held 78% of possession while taking 17 shots out of which only six were on target. The team in total put 54 crosses out of which only 14 were successful. The club seems to be in dire straits, as they have only won one game of their last four, having lost one and drawn the other two. They got thrashed 3-0 by Bayern Munich in their UEFA Champions League Group Stage match on Tuesday. Their coach Ronald Koeman has been under pressure to produce a positive result but he did no good to his image as he brought on centreback Gerard Pique from the bench in the 75th minute to play as a striker. It was a very strange substitution but given the way, the wingers and fullbacks were spamming crosses into the box it did fit the billing. However, Barcelona fans were not pleased with the idea of seeing Pique as a forward, with some calling it a 'sad' move and others compared having the like of Neymar Jr, Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi upfront to now having Pique and Luuk de Jong as forwards, take a look at some of their reactions:

'Not the Barcelona of right years ago' - Koeman

Barcelona and Koeman need to start working on their tactics and form a proper team if they are to compete for La Liga with the likes of Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. After the match, Koeman said, "Today's Barca is not the Barca of eight years ago. We played Barca's way, but we don't have the speed on the break because (Philippe) Coutinho goes inside, (Yusuf) Demir doesn't go too deep and that's the way it is. With Ansu (Fati) or (Ousmane) Dembele it's different, you have more speed, but you have to look for alternatives."

"Before the game, you think about winning, especially at home, but our bad start made the game difficult for us. We didn't come in strong, it was our fault. The opponent, after scoring, wasted time from minute two, defended more, did not leave spaces and this is difficult. We improved during the game. We changed and we played with crosses from the wings. We put energy into scoring. We wanted more, but one point is better than nothing. We deserved the draw," Koeman was quoted as saying by Goal.com.

(Image: AP)