All Eyes Are on How Barca Reacts | FC Barcelona vs Athletic Bilbao Preview

AAll eyes will be on Barca to see how they respond to the surprising defeat at the hands of Leganes. Will Athletic Bilbao pay for Barca's defeat or will Bilbao will make us suffer more?

While previewing the matches for September, I have remarked why the match against Athletic Bilbao was one of the toughest and the Leganes and Girona was a cake walk. Now those tow samll teams have made sure that my prediction surely made a fool out of me. Against Girona and leganes we have one point to show; and now we enter into a crunch match against Athletic where failure cannot be an option.

Athletic despite their good result against Real Madrid a couple of weeks back, are in the midst of a horrible run of form. They haven't managed to win in last four games and that makes them the ideal opponent for Barca to forget the defeat against Leganes.

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'Rakitic-Coutinho' is NO 'Xavi-Iniesta'! Valverde Needs to understand this Quickly

At times Barca's strategy still operates on the assumption that it's Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta who is controlling things in the midfield. The coach and the management needs to understand that they cannot expect others to simply dole the role of these two legendary midfielders!

Barcelona Football Club has been blessed with an abundance of legendary mid fielders throughout it's history. Even with such a list, one have to admit that it was the Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta, who brought a 'Normal than Usual' stature to those positions. They both remain and still is regarded as the 'Greatest Midfield Duo' of all time; not only in Barcelona but also across the Footballing history.

In the 'Golden Era' of Barcelona, Xavi and Iniesta dictated the 'Game Play' of Barcelona. The duo not only decided the formation we used but also 'The Nature of Barca's Game pLay' was dictated by these two. And the effect of it becomes much more pronounce, when you consider that they did this in the presence of may be 'Greatest of All Time' player, Lionel Messi.

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Barca Suffers Shock Defeat at Leganes | Barca - 1 : Leganes - 2

Barca tasted the first defeat of the season against the most unsuspecting Opponent, bottom placed Leganés. Barca conceded two goals in as much as minutes in the second half to give away a hard earned first half lead.

Barcelona Football Club suffered their first defeat of the season against the lowest placed side in the table, C D Leganés. The result shocked everyone and all of us expected for us to lose the 'Top of the Table' position; but in a strange twist of events, we still maintain the top position courtesy of Sevilla defeating Real Madrid by three goals.

For some reason, this season have started to strike a bit of similarity with Luis Enrique's last season. In that season also, every time the table topping side stumbled, the chasing sides also stumbled. Only change is that the position are reversed; this time it's us stumbling and Real Madrid failing to capitalize.

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