Hi guys! Just a brief note to let you all know that this Barcelona blog has been moved to ESPN FC. Thank you for all your support over the years, you make it all worthwhile. Click here to access the latest on Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez and the rest of our Camp Nou stars. Looking forward to your comments and thoughts. Força Barça!

Tito Vilanova bravely accepted the very challenging task of succeeding Pep Guardiola, the most successful manager in over 110 years of FC Barcelona history. His experience as Pep's highly-involved assistant coach means that he doesn't need to waste time getting to know the squad, only recruit the right players to improve the team we already have.

Neymar da Silva Santos Junior will be the next big name to join FC Barcelona. That is, of course, if you choose to believe the hype that the Catalan media keeps trying to create on a daily basis.

Javi Martinez is the missing piece in Barcelona's puzzle ahead of the 2012/13 season. I believe that adding the 24-year-old Basque midfielder to our squad would be sufficient to challenge for all titles next season. Especially after completing the transfer of speedy left-back Jordi Alba for a mere €14 million, which, as you can read here, was an absolute bargain!

Jordi Alba has finally achieved his dream of coming back to Barcelona. After months of negotiations, the Cules have agreed to pay Valencia a total of €14m despite the fact that Alba only had 12 months left in his contract. Some argue paying that much for a player who would have been free next summer is a waste of money. Keep reading to find out why they are wrong.

I must admit I am increasingly annoyed about the obsession the Catalan media seem to have towards signing of Thiago Silva from AC Milan this summer. It really feels like one can simply not read any Barcelona-related news without the Brazilian centre-back's name popping up at some stage. Is he really the only central defender on Earth?

Barcelona's season collapsed after a horrendous week which included defeats to Real Madrid in La Liga and Chelsea in the Champions League. While the other 4 titles lifted this year can't be overlooked, it must be said that Barcelona were unable to beat teams who opted for ultra defensive formations at crucial points of the season.

Barcelona won the Spanish Supercup, European Supercup, Club World Cup and Copa Del Rey this season. Winning 4 out of 6 possible titles should be considered a success but, being brutally honest, I must admit I expected better considering our powerful squad and previous achievements under Pep Guardiola.

Barcelona fans around the world love new signings but we must take our time to analyse our current situation before we can decide how our limited budget should be spent.

Who excelled? Who must be sold? Who must be given another chance? Who deserved more playing time? Who needs to be loaned out?

Read on to find out my assessment of every Barcelona player in the 2011/12 season and whether they deserve to be at the Camp Nou next year - or not!

Pep Guardiola walked away from Barcelona. While I am obviously sad to see him leave, the Camp Nou will continue to stand strong without him. Many greats have left in the past, many greats will leave in the future.

The show must and will go on.

Since Guardiola announced his departure, I have heard a variety of rivals and so-called football experts arguing Barcelona's winning cycle is over. For me, it is clear those who doubt don't understand how our Blaugrana club works behind the scenes: Barça is much bigger than one person, whatever their name is.

Since Pep Guardiola announced he was leaving his post as Barcelona manager, many rumors have started filling the front pages of the Catalan media, mostly focusing on how newly-appointed Tito Vilanova will develop the team further and, inevitably, which players he has identified as main targets this summer.

In a properly bold font, Sport claimed on its website that 35,000 spectators jammed into the Camp Nou - as if that would fill it up - in order to see the official presentation of Cesc Fabregas. Sid Lowe, writing in The Guardian, claimed 20,000, but it doesn’t much matter. It’s the narrative that appears important here, the closing of a saga eight years in the making.

It would be virtually impossible to fail to be excited about Cesc’s inclusion in the squad. When taken at face value, the move makes sense: giving Cesc, one of the better midfielders in the world, time with Xavi before the latter retires and also to let Guardiola coach the kid who grew up idolizing him and dreaming of one day wearing the number 4 in blaugrana. That the transfer became a saga instead of a business transaction is everyone’s fault; now that it’s over it’s hard to imagine a world where every summer morning doesn’t include a glazed over eye rolling while perusing the day’s headlines.

All players are brilliant; they’re magnificent and they’re just plain good people. Or at least ours are. The others, we’re not so sure about. So it’s always somewhat sad to see those chicos flit off into the “real world”—by which we mean dingy and allegedly corrupt—not only because they’re no longer our boys, sporting our colors, but also because we’re kind of duty-bound to dislike them.

Only I can’t really dislike our recent quatrain of departures. Oriol Romeu evokes the least nostalgia simply because he hasn’t done anything. Hopefully he’ll become a world beater and return to us for what we all agree is a bargain basement price for such a fantastically well-rounded player. Bojan Krkic and Jeffrén Suárez too make moves to Roma and Sporting Club with hope of a brilliant return. Do well enough abroad and we’ll see what we couldn’t before; you’ll break into the first team, for sure.

All players are brilliant; they’re magnificent and they’re just plain good people. Or at least ours are. The others, we’re not so sure about. So it’s always somewhat sad to see those chicos flit off into the “real world”—by which we mean dingy and allegedly corrupt—not only because they’re no longer our boys, sporting our colors, but also because we’re kind of duty-bound to dislike them.

Only I can’t really dislike our recent quatrain of departures. Oriol Romeu evokes the least nostalgia simply because he hasn’t done anything. Hopefully he’ll become a world beater and return to us for what we all agree is a bargain basement price for such a fantastically well-rounded player. Bojan Krkic and Jeffrén Suárez too make moves to Roma and Sporting Club with hope of a brilliant return. Do well enough abroad and we’ll see what we couldn’t before; you’ll break into the first team, for sure.

The wait, that arduous wait for a major Barça signing, is over. I was able to relax this summer thanks to the seemingly endless rumours flowing through Twitter and the daily sports rags—and yes, I'm pretty impervious to Cesc Fabregas rumours—but now my holiday is over and it's time to welcome Barça's first ever Chilean signing.

Benvingut Alexis Sánchez, a 22-year old winger slash all-purpose player capable, if his Copa America performances are anything to go by, of filling gaps in the front five. His transfer fee is a €26m deal with an additional €11.5m in performance-based variables while the contract itself is a five-year deal.

I’ve previously written about Barça’s homegrown striker, defending him from unfair attacks, but with his impending move to Roma, there is little left to say except thank you and goodbye. Goodbye for now, anyway.* The number 9 shirt is open again, but what has the club lost?

Bojan Krkic was born in Linyola, Spain, in what must have been 2008 from the way fans talk about him, but which was actually 1990. His father, also named Bojan Krkic, was a Red Star Belgrade player who immigrated to Spain while his mother is Catalan. He joined the club in 1999 at the age of 8 and rose rapidly through the club’s youth ranks, scoring more goals than anyone in the history of the academy. Some say a thousand, but that smacks of Romario-esque number inflation. He made his debut for the senior squad under Frank Rijkaard in 2007 as the youngest player to make a league appearance for Barça. He scored 10 league goals in his first year and 12 overall.

It’s easy enough to get lost in the rumours. The current one, first reported by Dutch sports magazine Voetbal International, is that Barcelona are negotiating with PSV Eindhoven for the January signing of Ibrahim Afellay. What’s intriguing about this rumour is not the player (a solid, dependable player) or the low price (€2-4m), but rather who is behind the scenes.

Today's announcement that Rafa Márquez has agreed with the club to rescind his contract, making him eligible for a move to the New York Red Bulls, should come as no surprise to anyone. Márquez played for 7 years at FCB, amassing 242 appearances and 13 goals in all competitions. His first goal for us was in the 2-1 home win over Real Betis on November 9, 2003 while his last goal was this stunner of a freekick in the 4-0 home win over Racing Santander on February 20 of this year.

I've already written about him a bit here, so instead of focusing too much on him (though he does deserve a fair number of tributes), I'll focus primarily in this article on the club and squad at large.

The Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper, named for Barça's founder, sits in Sant Joan Despi, a small city of about 32,000 on the western outskirts of Barcelona. It is here that most of Barça's training takes place and where this week several of the players have returned after their vacations. The first team members currently working out with Guardiola are Jose Manuel Pinto, Maxwell, Gabi Milito, Adriano, Víctor Sánchez, Seydou Keita, Alexander Hleb, Bojan Krkic, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Jeffren.

What's more notable at the moment is the inclusion of 14 Barça B players (their team having been renamed once again from Barcelona Atletic this summer). Those players are goalies Oier Olazábal, Rubén Miño, and Jordi Masip; defenders Albert Dalmau, Sergi Gómez, Armando Lozano, and Marc Muniesa; midfielders Ilie Sánchez, Jonathan dos Santos, Martí Riverola, Tello, and Sergi Roberto; and forwards Cuenca, Benja, Jonathan Soriano, Edu Oriol, and Nolito. Defender Andreu Fontàs and forward Víctor Vázquez are both currently injured, but are also training on the margins of the group.

The Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper, named for Barça's founder, sits in Sant Joan Despi, a small city of about 32,000 on the western outskirts of Barcelona. It is here that most of Barça's training takes place and where this week several of the players have returned after their vacations. The first team members currently working out with Guardiola are Jose Manuel Pinto, Maxwell, Gabi Milito, Adriano, Víctor Sánchez, Seydou Keita, Alexander Hleb, Bojan Krkic, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Jeffren.

What's more notable at the moment is the inclusion of 14 Barça B players (their team having been renamed once again from Barcelona Atletic this summer). Those players are goalies Oier Olazábal, Rubén Miño, and Jordi Masip; defenders Albert Dalmau, Sergi Gómez, Armando Lozano, and Marc Muniesa; midfielders Ilie Sánchez, Jonathan dos Santos, Martí Riverola, Tello, and Sergi Roberto; and forwards Cuenca, Benja, Jonathan Soriano, Edu Oriol, and Nolito. Defender Andreu Fontàs and forward Víctor Vázquez are both currently injured, but are also training on the margins of the group.

Hello and welcome to the new Barcelona Correspondents page here at Soccernet. The Powers That Be at the Worldwide Leader have been kind enough to allow my humble voice to be projected here for the foreseeable future. I'll obviously be talking about all things FC Barcelona with a smattering of league-wide thoughts.

I've been blogging about Barcelona for more than 3 years now and am currently a writer over at Barcelona Football Blog where I cover upcoming matches and occasionally dabble in editorial pieces. Here at ESPN I'll be covering some of the more mundane things, like results, injuries, transfers, etc. Did I say mundane? I meant the reason I wake up in the morning.