First they tried to bring back Lionel Messi, then they did bring back Dani Alves, briefly. Rafa Márquez returned to take over the B team, Xavi Hernández came home, this time as coach, and Deco arrived again, the former midfielder turned sporting director. They attempted to get Carles Puyol to join them. And now Joan Laporta, the president who also came back, re-elected to the post 17 years after he first ran for it and a decade after he had departed, wants Edgar Davids to return to FC Barcelona.

Well, an Edgar Davids, anyway. And, yes, that was exactly how the president put it. At 50, it might be a bit late to stick the actual Davids in the middle of midfield, but on the eve of their last competitive game before Christmas, 24 hours before they then flew to Dallas for a friendly in return for €5m (£4.3m) they desperately need, Laporta announced that the signing Barcelona wanted was someone just like the Dutchman. The reference was understood immediately by everyone even after almost 20 years, his name a byword for a winter transfer that works, a catalyst for change.

When Davids arrived in January 2004, Barcelona were seventh, 15 points behind Real Madrid. In Laporta’s first season as president, things were crumbling, no way out of the crisis. Davids’s first game ended in a 1-1 draw with Athletic Bilbao, the next nine in victory. His arrival freed Xavi and liberated Ronaldinho and by the end Barcelona had overhauled Madrid, defeating them 2-1 at the Santiago Bernabéu. It was not enough to win the league – Valencia took the title – but it was the resurrection, the start of their era. The virtuous cycle Laporta talked about had begun.

That era has become a weight upon this one yet it is also, Laporta believes, a lesson, a certain nostalgia running through his second era as president.Now heading into winter seven points behind Girona and Real Madrid, with Xavi describing parts of their final performance of 2023 as “unacceptable”, his a team “without soul”, they seek something similar: the Davids Effect.

At the start of December, Barcelona defeated Atlético in the game that had been set to define both of their seasons, deciding whether they were in the title race. They also made it into the knockout phase of the Champions League for the first time in three years, topping their group. But defeats against Girona and Antwerp plus a draw against Valencia brought the fatalism back, cracks reappearing. “It’s like a funeral,” Xavi said, “I get messages as if my mother or father died and I think: ‘Blimey, what happened?’”

The coach had described it all as unreal, exaggerated; this team are defending champions, after all. He complained that the Barcelona media shouldn’t “drop out at the first turn” and pointedly noted that none of the journalists in the room had congratulated him for progressing in Europe, as if that is their duty. Barcelona’s objectives had been met so far, he insisted. Yet Xavi knows the gap in the league is significant, qualification in Europe a minimum written into the budget, and that the pessimism is not just about the press. He is aware that criticism and tension don’t just reach the inside from without but also reach the outside from within.

His claim that this is a team “in construction” was disconcerting and the confusion over the squad that travelled to Antwerp did not speak of internal cohesion or stability either. Xavi left out Robert Lewandowski, Ronald Araújo and Ilkay Gündogan, only for the list to be re-released with all three in it. He then responded to reports that the new squad was the product of presidential prerogative by claiming it had been a “consensus” decision from the club, only for the sporting director to lay responsibility solely at his door.

For all that he has talked about their main issue being profligacy, truly impressive performances have been few; if anything results have been better than performances. After the Almería game, which Barcelona won 3-2, a late winner scraping past the side that have not won all season, all those doubts, all the frustrations, finally came to the surface. Xavi turned on his players, which tends not to end well. At half-time he told them they had to run like animals or they had no chance; this is not the 2010 side, he reminded them.

Something has to be done. One to 11, there is not a huge amount wrong with the team, not when it comes to names, but attention inevitably turns to signings. If Xavi really wants to see something “unreal” he need only see the cast of characters on the covers each morning.

A Davids is different, though. It is a real aspiration, for a start, publicly stated. With the doubts about Oriol Romeu, who joined from Girona in the summer, and with Gavi sustaining a cruciate ligament tear, an athletic, tough, defensive midfielder is needed, one who needs no time to adapt; a player contagious to the group even more so.

There is another element, immediately understood as a defining characteristic of “a Davids”: the Dutchman came on loan, provided a solution and then, six months later, was gone again, job done: €2m in wages (of his total salary of €8m) and that was it: no ties, no hidden costs, no mortgaging of their future, which is precarious enough as it is. The crisis that forced the departure of Messi, and prevented him from coming back may not be quite so alarming as it was a couple of years ago but it certainly has not been resolved.

Which is why when Laporta said “the idea would be to have a midfielder who in some way compensates for the absence of Gavi”, there was an if. “If we can get ‘fair play’,” the president added. “It would be a loan until the end of the season, just like we did years ago with Davids.” Even then, Xavi said: “It’s very difficult. We’re working with Deco and the president but we have to see if it is possible with the salary issue.”

Barcelona’s salary limit, their first-team budget set by the league’s financial fair play rules, is €270m, compared with €727m for Real Madrid. That would be difficult enough, but the amount they are spending on their squad – while down from €676m, and much as they have shed some of their highest earners, such as Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, Antoine Griezmann, and Gérard Pique – is €492m. Because they are over their limit, league rules allow them to spend only a third of what they can show they have saved. For every euro spent, they must demonstrate that three have been brought in.

This is where the (in)famous palancas or levers, came in, and part of the reason they have clung so hard to the Super League. Creative accounting has been key, by their own admission. Last year, Barcelona made a €98m profit, inflated by the sale of €727m of non-sporting assets, which they have preferred to draw on rather than debilitate the team. But that was an emergency measure that allowed them to rebuild a competitive squad and even sign Lewandowski, but cannot be repeated every window. At 35, meanwhile, Lewandowski is not the same man in front of goal this season.

Last summer, Barcelona spent €3.4m on signings, all on Romeu. Iñigo Martínez signed for free, his salary subsequently shifted to fit within the limits, as did Gündogan, which appeared a clever bit of business from a club that can still attract. João Félix and João Cancelo came on loan at the very end of the market, their arrivals personally undersigned by board members. Barcelona would like to keep both but that requires creative solutions. It is also another issue for another day, another problem pushed down the road.

Barcelona’s total debt is €1.2bn. This year, they are budgeting for an income of €859m, projecting an €11m profit. Doing so requires them to reach the Champions League quarter-finals. Meanwhile, the move to Montjuic while the Camp Nou is rebuilt – where only 17,000 socios took up the option to keep their season tickets and the meeting with Atlético drew 34,568 fans – is costing them €78m a season, according to the vice-president, Eduardo Romeu. Strengthening in that context is not easy, either in terms of complying with financial fair play rules, which are applied a priori, or simply being able to afford it.

Barcelona have already signed the Brazilian teenager Vitor Roque for €30m plus €26m in variables, the initial €30m spread over the seven years of his contract. He had been due to join next summer but his arrival has been brought forward to January – although Xavi was swift to say that they could not load him with the pressure already. Just getting him is a battle: Barcelona need to free up about €13m of financial fair play margin to register him. They had planned to do that with the arrival of a €40m payment from the investment fund Libero, which bought a 29.5% share of Barça Studios. That payment, though, has not yet been made, forcing them to seek other investors.

“The squad is not as deep as we would like and sadly we have lost Gavi,” Deco said. “We had already signed Vitor and we decided that he should come now. But we depend on the fair play and it’s hard to sort this. I don’t like creating false expectations.”

Barcelona are, Laporta said, “working on a series of operations; if they can be confirmed, we will have a chance”. Because Gavi’s injury is more than five months, league rules allow Barcelona to spend up to 80% the value of his salary – but only until the end of the season. Whoever comes, if anyone does, he will have six months to turn Barcelona round. Just like Edgar Davids did.