After a decent few days off from our last game, we turn our attention back to La Liga. It’s the final stretch of the season and every game is important, and tonight is no different. Live from the Spotify Camp Nou, at 9pm local time. It’s the Catalan Derby. Barça Vs Girona. This is the second meeting between the two Catalan clubs since Girona’s promotion from the second division last season. They’re an incredibly talented team with a number of young and emerging talents. They’re a difficult team to beat who play a really attractive style of football. So for us, it’s definitely going to be a tricky test. But as always we’ll be hoping to come away from tonight’s game with a positive result. As well as hopefully an even more convincing performance in front of our home fans. Let’s jump straight into it.
A quick look at our opponents:
Girona currently find themselves in mid table. Comfortably sat in 11th place. 17 points off the top 4 and 7 points above the relegation zone. Their record over their last 5 league games is 2 draws, 2 wins and a single loss. That came against Atletico Madrid, 3 match days ago. They’re an equally balanced team, and that’s proven with the amount of goals they’ve conceded and scored all season. They’ve scored a total of 42 goals this season, and conceded exactly 42 goals. Meaning that not only is their attack pretty fluid, but they aren’t shy of conceding goals either. We’ll be looking to capitalise on that later tonight. It’s going to be a tricky game for us, especially considering the absentees. But of course, walking away from the game with a positive result is the most important thing. We’ll be hoping to do use that later on. Let’s take a look at the expected lineup for the game.
Predicted lineup:
Coming into the game, we are still going to be without Frenkie, Pedri, Dembele and Christensen. All are expected to hopefully be back in the next coupe of weeks. It is frustrating that we still aren’t able to count on these players. Especially Pedri and Dembele. It’s been way too long since we’ve seen them in the team. Bringing in cover during the summer is going to be vital, so we can hopefully avoid these Ines of niggling setbacks next season. It was reported earlier on last week, that Frenkie could’ve been available for tonight’s game, but now that’s being pushed back to next weekend’s game against Getafe. Lets just hope they’re right with that estimation.
As for the lineup, I think Xavi should be making a couple changes. In the defence, we can’t be putting Alonso at centre back. Against Madrid, he was awful and with him in defence it means we can’t play a high line. And that doesn’t help us. So what id do, is take Roberto out of midfield and put him at right back. So we can put our two best centre backs, Araujo & Kounde, in the middle. Balde must be starting at Left back, that’s simple. In midfield, it pretty much picks itself. Unless Xavi decides to put Eric at Pivot again or maybe even someone like Alex Garrido or Torre. Then it will most definitely be Gavi, Kessie and Busi. With Gavi and Kessie coming off the back of a very impressive performance in midweek. And then finally, in attack, I’d go with Raphinha, Lewandowski and Ansu from the left.
My starting 11:
Ter Stegen
Roberto- Araujo- Kounde- Balde
Kessie- Busi- Gavi
Raphinha- Lewandowski- Ansu
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