solid win against trier, never in doubt obviously...
that being said, i'm not at all sold on bartra to be honest. credit where credit's due, his pass to aubameyang (when he hit the post for the 1st time tonight) was outstanding. he had a handfull of really good passes in this game, tried to help organise the defense, was constantly communicating with his teammates and showed a positive attitude and a good work rate throughout the whole game.
that being said, there were a couple of things that make me wonder if he was a particularly good signing:
- first of all, he looked very shaky whenever he went into a challenge, he lost quite a few of them (to 4th league opponents!) - not only because he seems rather lightweight for a cb but also because his positioning in these situations was sometimes questionable.
- then there is his first touch... off the top of my head i can think of two situations where he made quite the mess of really easily controllable short passes. against proper opponents this can and will lead to goals.
- also, his heading (defensive as well as offensive) seems rather weak for a cb. offensively it's not that important. although an additional threat in the opponent's box is nice, it's not the main job of a defender. defensively, however, it's quite bad - and i could certainly see him struggle in that department.
what concerns me a bit is that i expect tuchel to pretty much hold on to him unless he fucks up massively in consecutive games since he likes that combination of a more defensive minded cb (sokraboss) and an offensive one and in that regard, bartra seems a bit better than ginter and a lot better than subotic. against strong opponents, however, i'd definitely prefer ginter in that role - especially if you have guys like rode and castro who work so much and always seem to be available for short passes to initiate the attack...