Match Preview : Barça VS Elche

Match Preview : Barça VS Elche – La Liga

It’s been a rare week for us in terms of rest. We’ve had a entire week off since our last game in La Liga, and to be honest, it’s exactly what this team needed. During that time we’ve managed to recover a few players from the injury list, with Joan Garcia nearing his return too, but that has come at a cost. A huge cost in fact. Heading into our next league game. Live from Montjuic at 6:30pm local time, we will be without possibly our most important player. Against Elche, we will be without our magician, Pedri. And that’s going to be the case for the next few weeks too.

Sadly, injuries are what football is all about nowadays. And given our recent form, we can’t go into tonight’s game underestimating Elche. A newly promoted side, but we haven’t hit our best form yet and we’ve been struggling for a while. Especially physically. So tonight is going to be another challenge, let’s jump straight into the preview!

A Quick Look at our opponent:

Newly promoted side, Elche are a team we have faced on many occasions before. This time around, there’s a few familiar faces that we may come up against. Both Iñaki Peña and Hector Fort are currently on loan with Elche, adding to the quality already in the squad. In terms of their form in La Liga, on paper, the results have been pretty up and down. But they are currently sitting in 8th place in the league. For a newly promoted side, that’s a brilliant start to a league campaign and to be honest, in most of their games so far this season, they’ve played some pretty good stuff.

For us, we don’t have the right, at the moment at least, to look at anyone in the league and think it’s going to be an easy game. With injuries and our recent form, any game for us at the moment is a test. We’ll give up chances, we just need to make sure that we are properly capitalising on the ones we make for ourself. Taking note of the games that have already been played this weekend, so far, it adds even more importance to the result later this evening.

Predicted lineup;

Although we’ve had a weeks rest, it has been another week of injuries for us. Pedri was already set to miss tonight’s game anyway due to suspension, after picking up a red card against Madrid. But sadly for us, during the past week, Pedri picked up an injury that will keep him on the sidelines for at least a month. It’s a massive blow, a huge blow to this team . He is possibly our most important player and has been an ever present figure in Flick’s side since he came in. But honestly, it was inevitable. Pedri has played a ridiculous amount of games on a consistent level, so an injury was bound to happen.

We will be able to rely on the services of Lewandowski and Olmo after they were declared fit yesterday. But it’s going to be interesting to see how Flick shapes up with the absence of Pedri. The midfield is already quite light in numbers, so will we start to see more of Bernal? It’s a headache for Flick, so all we can do is wait and see.