I must admit that I am a Liverpool supporter. However, as an American, my access to live football is mostly through ESPN, which airs a lot of Barcelona matches. I must admit that Barca play an incredibly entertaining and beautiful brand of football. There have been times over the past few years where I thought your club has played near perfect football and it has been a joy to watch.

Over the past few weeks I have made a few observations:

• Teams plan on attacking you by placing a lone striker, preferably strong and quick, near midfield. They try and play long-ball counter attacks and let the striker go one-on-one with your defenders. It's working. One of the things I admire about Barca is their football "culture" and their determination to play their style of football--but I have been wondering if they haven't done enough to adjust to these tactics.

• Your squad doesn't seem to be a threat from distance. You might have wonderful strikers of the ball, but no one seems to ever take chances from behind the 18 yard line. This might go against your philosophy, but I would think that occasionally threatening from outside would help pull defenders out of the box. You opponents seem content to live inside their own 18 and aren't worried about your long range efforts.

• Set pieces. I think this is a spot where people have said you club has a weakness. On defense, I'm not going to debate zonal-marking, there have been times you look great and times you look poor. (I think this is true for most teams with any system) On offense you have surprised me this year. I don't think of your club as a huge threat in the air. I have some memories of watching Puyol fly through the air and head home corners, but I feel as if it is not one of your teams strengths. In fact I always remember your squad taking quick/short corners and free-kicks to just get the ball back in play. It looks like you have gotten away from this.

• You have been letting in some soft goals as of late. I have heard a lot of people criticizing Valdes and I personally don't think he is a world class keeper. I think there is some merit to the saying that sometimes it's easier to be good when you are busy. It is very hard to sit and watch 90% of a game in the other half of play, and then switch on for a crucial couple of seconds. However, I also think this also has a lot to do with defenders over-committing or allowing too much space for the lone counter-attacking strikers to do their thing.

• I wonder if your recent form is an effect of your squad being stretched too thin mentally. Your entire squad has been playing an absurd amount of football (league, domestic cups, CL, world cup, international play) for about 4 years. Along with astronomical expectations, do you think this is wearing on your players and manager?

• I really hope Pique is okay and I wish him well. On TV replay, you could immediately see that he went into the "fencing response" and was concussed. I was screaming at the TV to get him off the field. I think Busquets deserves some credit. As Drogba ran past Pique, and he fell over, the announcers were saying Drogba muscled him off the ball. Busquets saw something was wrong, frantically signaled to the sideline, and Pique was taken off.

I wish your squad well and hope you continue to play fantastic football in the future.