Next Saturday, 1st of November 2014, a somehow fragilized Barcelona will take on a consistent Celta de Vigo at Camp Nou for round ten of the Spanish Liga BBVA, a match during which the Catalans need to bounce back from their harsh defeat at the hands of their all-time rivals, Real Madrid, last Saturday, that is if they want to keep Los Blancos at bay.

After eight consecutive league matches without conceding a single goal, Barcelona’s defensive effectiveness ended abruptly last Saturday, when the Catalans allowed a highly confident Real Madrid to score three times, thus exposing some clear limitations of their team’s defence line. The match couldn’t have started in a better way for Barça, since Neymar opened the score after just three minutes from the initial kick-off. Luis Enrique’s boys had some quality moments, especially during the first-half, but after Cristiano Ronaldo’s equalizer, they sucumbed to their opponents splendid game flow. Los Blancos demolished the somehow apathetic Barça of the second-half and not even the new faces, Rakitic and Pedro, the Asturian manager brought in during the second part of the match were able to produce anything fairly special.

It is not fair to judge Barcelona’s moment just from the match of Santiago Bernábeu, although it was blatantly obvious that Luis Enrique still has plenty to do if he wants his team to claim La Liga’s title this season.

Barça’s front trident formed by Messi, Suárez and Neymar showed glimpses of quality but failed to be consistent, especially because there aren’t still many game routines between the Uruguayan erratic striker and his colleagues.

The match against Celta will mark Luis Enrique’s re-encounter with the team he helped to build last season and the Catalan’s side manager is certainly aware of the type of difficulties he might expect.

As for Celta de Vigo, the Galician team is having an excellent season start under the helm of their new boss, Eduardo Berizzo, who, by the way, is probably one of the most interesting managers of La Liga this season. Los Celestes returned to wins last Friday, when they hosted and smashed Levante at Los Balaídos by 3-0 with two goals by the newcomer Larrivey and another one by the former Spanish youth international midfielder, Álex López.

Celta are currently on the sixth place of La Liga’s table with just one defeat from nine matches and if they manage to continue with this type of consistency, they will probably grant a place at the European competitions next season.

Barcelona are obviously favourites for next Saturday’s match, but it is fair to mention that if Celta, who remain unbeaten away from home so far, manage to replicate what they did at Vicente Calderón against Atlético Madrid this season, they might leave Camp Nou with something fairly more interesting than a mere defeat.

Barcelona

Stats: W-3 L-2 D-0

Recent Form - LWWWK

Celta

Stats: W-3 L-1 D-1

Recent Form - WDLWW

Possible Line-ups

Barcelona (4-3-3) - Bravo - Dani Alves - Mascherano - Piqué - Mathieu - Busquets - Xavi - Rakitic - Neymar - Suárez - Messi

Celta de Vigo (4-3-3) - Sérgio Álvarez - Hugo Mallo - Planas - Cabral - S. Gómez - Álex Lopez - Radoja - Krohn Dehli - Orellana - Nolito - Larrivey

Prediction

Barcelona 2 Celta de Vigo 1