Barça/Deportivo Preview

As you might have noticed, it has been far too long since I last updated this. Unfortunately, University work which despite being far less enjoyable, none the less had to be done.

In the days that have passed since I last wrote, Barça produced their best passing display of this season against Inter, looking far more like the tempo of last season. Following on from that was a tight but vital win in el clasico, and then the snore-fest in Xerez last week.

The Xerez game doesn't concern me too much ; we fielded a weakened lineup, and in light of this i expect a lot of the big game players to be fresh for the Deportivo game tonight.

Our record against Depor in recent years is pretty terrible. Pep has yet to win away to A Coruña, though we did muster up a draw at a meaningless stage of the season last year.

I think this game is a potential banana skin, Deportivo are playing well and they are more than capable of causing an upset. That being said, if we can find the rhythm of the Inter game again, and field a strong lineup, I'm confident we'll get the result.

My predicted lineup would be:

---------------Valdes-------------

--Alves--Puyol--Pique--Abidal

--------------Toure---------------

-------Xavi----------Iniesta------

--Messi-----Zlatan----Henry----

Abidal has been in fine form as of late, and is getting forward a lot more than he used to. All he needs now is a pair of shooting boots and hopefully he'll notch up his first Barça goal.

Toure put in an unusually poor performance against Xerez, but with Busquets out he's the natural pick for this game, I don't expect him to play poorly twice in a row either.

Hopefully Iniesta and Xavi can play in midfield again, it seems like we rarely see this, by far our strongest central midfield partnership, in action at all this season. Keita is great, but doesn't have the creativity of Iniesta and as such, when he plays in the middle, our strikers tend to come looking for the ball a little bit more than they should.

I expect Zlatan to score, because he seems to like doing it so much. Messi made some fine runs against Xerez , and I reckon he's due a goal too. I'd like to see Henry score too, and build on his goal last week. In any case, I think that's a bit ambitious, this will be a tight game, and with Puyol and Pique playing (Marquez and Dima played midweek, so this would be the natural choice) I don't expect us to concede.

I'll go 1-0 Barça, Messi to net the winner, though at a push I'd say 2-1 with Zlatan being the other scorer is a possibility.

Finally, Millito will be on the bench for this game most probably. Hopefully he gets a run out, if he can get back to form he'll be a vital asset.

Visca el Barça i visca Catalunya.