Matchday 2 of La Liga sees up come up against Real Sociedad away from home at 10pm Local time. Live from the Anoeta. It’s just the second game into the season, but already it’s another big test for our new exciting team. Having dropped points in our first game against Rayo last week. It’s vital we get back on track with a positive result tonight.
It’s early on in the season and as well all know the season is long. Our new signings are slowly adapting to the team, aswell as our incredible youngsters too. The start may be slow, but when things click into place, we all know how incredible we can become. Most important thing is to remain patient, humble and keep working. Keep working to improve and build after every single game.
Don’t worry teams around us are doing, just focus on ourselves. It’s going to be a tough game later tonight, but we have the players and the coach to pull us through. Hopefully coming out for the game with a good result. And most importantly a good performance.
Lessons from our first game:
As mentioned previously, our first game of the season didn’t end in the way we all hoped. Expectations are high for this season, and rightfully so, but there was a clear sense of nerves against Rayo. With a fresh squad of new players and young talents, it’s more than expected. More games we play will benefit us and allow us to settle in a lot better. Although the result was disappointing, the performance was far from it. And because of the result, the good signs we showed were easily swept under the carpet. But overall, the performance was solid.
We dominated the game. Passed the ball around really well, especially out from the back and into attack. We seem to progress with a lot more directness than before, which allows us to carve out tonnes of chances. And with the amount of quality we have in the front line, the goals will come. Defensively we looked a lot more solid too. The referee made some very odd decisions on the night. Blatantly missing two clear penalty claims from our side and allowing Rayo to waste so much time. So of course that didn’t help us either, as it just meant the game was breaking up too often.
Overall, we performed well and there are many things still to build on. The only thing we missed against Rayo, was that final touch. The final pass. Here’s hoping we can find our clinical touch in-front of goal later tonight. Scoring first away from home is always so vital!
Real Sociedad:
As far as our opponents for tonight go, they’ve started off pretty well in La Liga. Winning their first game 1-0 against Cadiz away from home. It will be their first home game of the season too against us. Which just makes our job even tougher. They’re always a solid team to come up against.
We’ve just got to ensure that we’re fully focused and up for the game. We narrowly won last seasons fixture 1-0. Thanks to a goal from Aubameyang. But it was far from an easy game. And I won’t be expecting anything less from them tonight. As we progress through the season, we can delve further into our opponents. At the moment however, it’s still early days. The most important thing for us is to come away with a positive result. That’s all that matters.
Predicted lineup:
For our potential lineup against Real Sociedad, we could expect to see a number of changes. Forced and tactical. Busquets is suspended for the game, after picking up a red card against Rayo. So it’ll be interesting to see who takes over in the pivot position. Kounde is unfortunately not yet registered in time for the game tonight. And with Xavi making it clear that Dest isn’t in his plans either, Roberto may come in at right back. One things for sure, we cannot put Araujo out there again. It simply doesn’t work. He’s our best centre back by far, so he has to stay in the centre.
Jordi Alba had a very poor game against Rayo, so he may be on the bench. That’s what we’re all hoping for at least. So could this be a chance to see Alejandro Balde at left back again? It’s definitely a possibility. Eric Garcia and Christensen have been extremely impressive so far. So it’ll be interesting to see who will partner Araujo.
In midfield, we could see a few changes. Frenkie came on and played like a man possessed last weekend. He and Ansu completely changed the game, and he deserves to start tonight. He’ll possibly come in for Gavi, but we’ll have to wait and see for that one. In attack, last week we saw the trident of Raphinha, Lewa and Dembele. It worked pretty well, but the arrival of Ansu later against Rayo gave us something extra.
He has this incredible aura about him, that when he has the ball, you know he’ll make something happen. And could’ve easily scored a couple of goals from the bench. We also have Ferran who is 100% fit and could feature tonight too, which would be great to see. As again, he gives us something different. His movement on and off the ball could open up so many chances for our other strikers.
Once again, it’ll be really interesting to see what our Boss, Xavi, decides to select against Sociedad. Below is my prediction for what we might see! Let’s go out there and officially start our season!
Visca BARÇA!
Ter stegen
Roberto- Araujo- Eric- Balde
Frenkie- Pjanic- Pedri
Dembele- Lewandowski- Ansu
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