In Depth: Whisper it, but was Neymar leaving a good thing for Barca?

After their European Super Cup hammering at the hands of Real Madrid, Barcelona have begun the Liga season in fine fashion, with five wins from five games having scored 17 and conceded just two.

Lionel Messi appears reinvigorated, adding a further four goals in the 6-1 rout of SD Eibar to take his tally to his nine in the league already this season.

This after a summer of discontent that had seen Messi’s heir apparent, Neymar, leave and a host of supposedly failed forays into the transfer market.

It's better to be lucky than good, goes the old adage. Fortunately for Barcelona, it looks like they are both.

The Catalans did not want to let Neymar leave the club. It was, however, out of their hands. A release clause was paid. It was how the board reacted to losing the Brazilian that mattered. Alas, said reaction was pretty abject. There seemed to be little cohesion to their attempts to re-invest the £222 million that they were landed with.

Moves for Marco Verratti, Philippe Coutinho, Angel di Maria and Hector Bellerin came to nothing. They overpaid for Ousmane Dembele, who is undoubtedly talented but has one and three quarter seasons' experience of elite-level football; while Nelson Semedo and Paulinho were, given the aforementioned missed targets, clearly not first-choice signings.

Such was the shambles of their summer transfer window, there has been a motion of no confidence against Josep Maria Bartomeu.

However, despite the incompetence of those in charge, the Catalans might emerge from their summer of discontent a renewed force, certainly if their early Liga form is anything to go by. They have certainly lost some star power in the form of Neymar but the signings of Semedo and Paulinho aligned with a number of La Masia graduates – Gerard Deulofeu and Denis Suarez to name two - dotted around the squad have given the side a better balance. Ernesto Valverde deserves praise for moulding the hand he was dealt into a cohesive unit so quickly.

There is also the kerfuffle started by Neymar with Edinson Cavani over the weekend about who should take penalties. Perhaps, after a blistering start, everything is not as perfect as it seems at PSG? Wednesday's European papers seem to think this is the case...

A valid criticism – if slightly undermined, considering their success – of the ‘Neymar years’ revolved around the balance of the team. An exceptional front three brings some problems; namely a tendency to bypass the rest of the team. Barcelona’s much vaunted midfield has exerted less and less influence these last few years. Formerly indispensable players – looking at you Sergio Busquets – have been demoted to secondary roles.

Only time will tell but a Neymar-less Barcelona *might* lend itself to more balance. There are far tougher tests ahead for this side but, considering the tumultuous nature of their summer and the chaos of their Supper Coppa showing against Madrid, Bartomeu and his board could not have hoped for a better start.

Barcelona have made a great start to the season after a summer of turmoil. Though they have swept all the teams in their path aside with ease – including Juventus in the Champions League – much sterner tests await. Most notable is the match with Atletico Madrid on Saturday, October 14th. It is against that miserly defence and Diego Simeone's tactics that Messi and Co will be sorely tested. That result will tell us much more about the post-Neymar Barca.