It feels like a regular thing now, early on a Saturday afternoon, but here we are again. Back in La Liga action, looking for a big response after a very poor performance in midweek against Chelsea. This afternoon gives us a chance to get some players back from the sidelines and to also hopefully see something different from this team. A team that has been underperforming for the majority of the season so far. Live from the Spotify Camp Nou, at 4:15pm local time, it’s Barça up against Deportivo Alaves. Let’s jump straight into the preview!
A Quick Look at our opponent:
In terms of our opponent for the game, Alaves find themselves comfortably in the bottom half of the table. With their main aim for the season just to stay in the league. They’re not; on the face of it, an incredibly impressive team. Only scoring 11 goals across the season so far, but the do hold a pretty decent defensive record. 3 goals conceded fewer than us. So although they don’t score a lot of goals, they don’t concede that many either. Which probably explains their up and down season so far, for them there hasn’t been much consistency. But of course we can’t afford to underestimate that.
Alaves gives us an opportunity to get things on track with a decent performance at home. We can’t come into the game with a relaxed mentality, thinking we’ll easily get past them. We can’t afford to do that, in terms of the league standings for us, tonight is such an important game. Alaves will try and make things difficult for us, just like most of the teams in the bottom half of the table tend to do.
Predicted lineup:
One brilliant piece of news coming into this game, is the return of our magician. By far and away our most important player, Pedri. Pedri is finally back and that is wonderful. Fermin, unfortunately picked up a knock in midweek so we will be without him for a few weeks. And that’s a massive blow. But getting Pedri back is just so important. As for the rest of the team, there are no new injury concerns or absentees apart from Araujo.
Who is expected to miss the next few games. For me, I’d look at dropping Ferran to the bench and bringing Rashford back into the starting lineup. And it will be interesting to see if Raphinha gets his first start, or if Flick decides to bring him on at half time. Easing him back into the team slowly. I would understand that for sure. Changes are expected and needed, so let’s wait to see what Flick decides to go with for this afternoons vital game!
My prediction:
Joan Garcia
Eric- Cubarsi- Martin- Balde
Frenkie- Casado
Yamal- Olmo- Rashford
Lewandowski
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