FC Barcelona -5, Atletico Madrid - 0, Messi Hatrick lifts Barca to Second Place

FC Barcelona continued their excellent home run in 2011-12 La Liga season with a 5-0 victory against the high flying Atletico Madrid. With this victory FC Barcelona moved to second place in the La Liga standing. David Villa opened the scoring for Barca, followed by an own goal from Miranda and three brilliant goals from Messi gave Barca a comfortable victory, which is Barca's fifth in a row against the same side. As I wrote in the preview, Guardiola went with a three man defense. But how the defense will line up was still a doubt with the line up on present. The line up picked by Guardiola was Valdes, Abidal, Mascherano, Alves, Busquets, Thiago, Xavi, Cesc, Pedro, Messi and Villa. Meanwhile Atletico Madrid had an exciting line up with Courtois, Perea, Miranda, Godin, Antonio, Gabi, Tiago, Mario, Diego, Reyes and Falcao.

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FC Barcelona vs Atletico Madrid Preview

Every Barca fan will be approaching this game in most probability with a very much confused head. The confusion comes from the kind of oscillating results we had since the start of the season. Already there have been two away matches and same number of home matches. FC Barcelona has amazed a mind blowing 13 goals in the home matches. Even though there was no death of goals in the away fixtures, the problem was were were sharing those with the home team - being a nice guest, i would say. That's why following a 2-2 draw at Mestalla, we all will be a little trouble for what to expect from this game. No doubt that this one is going to be an entertaining one. Atletico has been firing in all cylinders in last couple of matches, especially with new signing Falcao on fire. And that's where Barca's greatest threat is to come tomorrow night. Atletico Madrid has scored two 4-0 victory at home in the last two matches, but it could be a complete different story at Cam Nou. Their only away match ended with a 1-0 victory in favour of the home side in Mestalla.

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Ibrahim Afellay to be sidlined for Six Months

Ibrahim Afellay, who recently returned from an injury suffered a huge set back with him suffering another serious injury. The official Barcelona site says - "Ibrahim Affellay has torn a crucial ligament in his left knee while training. He will require surgery and may miss upto six months of top flight football. That's would really hard for a player who expected this season to be a break out season. This is turning out to be a pretty bad month for Barca in terms of injury. First it was Sanchez, then Iniesta got injured and now it's Afellay. Wishing him a speedy recovery.