Next Wednesday, 24th of September 2014, the renewed super Barcelona will travel to Andalusia to go head-to-head with Málaga at La Rosaleda for round five of the Spanish Liga BBVA on a match where Luis Enrique will try to obtain his eighth consecutive win at the helm of the Catalan team.

After a narrow and unconvincing win for the UEFA Champions League against APOEL in the middle of the week, Barcelona hammered a fragile Levante team at Estadio Ciutat de Valencia last Sunday. Barça were in control throughout the entire match and didn’t allow Levante to effectively bother Claudio Bravo. The Catalan team proved to have tremendous solutions to solve any given match and that they don’t exclusively rely on Leo Messi anymore as it had happened in the recent past. Neymar proved to be in a good moment and Rakitic set the tone in the midfield line, offering Barcelona total control of the operations during the entire match.

The Barcelona of Luis Enrique is a completely different team from the one of both Tata Martino and Tito Vilanova, as this new Barça is fairly more aggressive (in a good sense) and work a lot more than they did in the recent past.

For the match against Málaga, which will certainly be far from easy, Luis Enrique will certainly implement some changes in his team due to the tight schedule the team is facing.

As for Málaga, they are certainly happy with their last minute draw against the other Catalan team, Espanyol, last Saturday. The experienced Portuguese midfielder Duda granted his team the equalizer from a free-kick on the 93rd minute of the match and has somewhat imprinted some justice in the scoreboard. During the first-half of match, Málaga were far from their best and even their capabilities, but after the break Camanho leveled the score and the Los Boquerones had plenty more chances to score again before Stuani netted in the second one for Espanyol.

When both sides met at La Rosaleda last term, Barcelona granted a narrow 1-0 win thanks to a goal by Adriano just before the break. Although both teams are fairly different from last season, Barcelona are firm favourites to win the match and there are great possibilities of history repeating itself next Wednesday.

Málaga

Stats: W-1 L-2 D-2

Recent Form - DDLWL

Barcelona

Stats: W-5 L-0 D-0

Recent Form - WWWWW

Possible Line-ups

Málaga (4-2-3-1) - Kameni - Rosales - Sánchez - Weligton - Antunes - Camacho - Darder - Horta - Alberto - Juanmi - Cruz

Barcelona (4-3-3) - Bravo - Montoya - Piqué - Mathieu - Jordi Alba - Busquets - S. Roberto - Rakitic - Neymar - Munir - Messi

Prediction

Málaga 0 Barcelona 2