Barcelona did what they could do at the moment, winning their game and stay on the trail of Real Madrid. This wasn't any spectacular performance, but good enough to secure three points.
Barcelona secured vital three points in their mostly fading campaign to defend the La Liga title. This victory moves them a point behind the league leader Real Madrid. The capital side has one game in hand and all eyes will be on how they fare against Alaves, who themselves are struggling big time.
The 1-0 victory against Espanyol wasn't spectacular but was enough to secure three points. Barcelona's victory confirmed the relegation of their city rivals to the Segunda Division. It's quite sad to see a Catalan side going down, but it was inevitable.
Espanyol Negate Barcelona with a Compact Defense
Barcelona's euphoria following the spectacular display against Villareal was dampened by the defensive setup of Espanyol. They went with a 5-4-1 formation and we retained the 4-3-1-2 formation from the last match.
Such a defensive formation with a centrally packed defense would have made it impossible to break it through the center. This game showed that one formation fits all strategy will not work with this Barcelona. We needed width and that wasn't on offer.
We were pretty lucky to have not gone down at half time as Espanyol proved they were the better team tactically. They had the better chances of the half and we simply were trying a lot with no pace and width. It felt as if we will drop points and a further drop from the top.
Two Red Cards changed the Match
Setien realized the lack of pace and introduced Fati for Semedo at half time. But it was short-lived as Fati was shown an unfortunate red card, a decision which looked like was instructed by someone in Madrid. Luckily for us, Espanyol also was reduced to 10 men after Lozano was sent off for a much worse challenge.
Lozano was instrumental for Espanyol with his work rate and his sudden absence completely shaken them off. Barcelona capitalized on that within three minutes with Saurez scoring after Griezmann and Messi combined with Alba on the wings.
That was enough for Barcelona and we kept controlling the match after that. We never pushed for a second, which could be attributed to fatigue slowly setting in after playing matches every three days.
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