Barcelona have gone strong in the UEFA Champions League so far barring their opening day defeat to Monaco. Having beaten the mighty Bayern Munich by a dominant scoreline, after all, they established themselves as one of the favourites.
Tomorrow night, they return to action in the competition, this time against Borussia Dortmund away from home in what will be a tricky fixture.
The Catalans have not been anywhere close to their best in recent games and even collapsed to a tame 2-2 draw in their most recent outing against Real Betis.
The focus tomorrow, thus, has to be to get back to winning ways and find their way back up for another similar month could have massive repercussions on their title hopes.
Barça Universal brings you three talking points ahead of Borussia Dortmund vs Barcelona.
A worrying European battle
Had the game against Borussia Dortmund come two months ago, there would be a real sense of confidence in the team that a win would not be difficult to pull off.
Over the past month, however, Barcelona have shown time and time again that they are vulnerable both in attack and defence.
Right from the game against Crvena Zvezda in the UEFA Champions League, teams have begun to easily decode the Catalans’ defensive frailties and have exploited them to maximum effect.
That, coupled with Barcelona’s suddenly dampened attack has led to problems across the park and a worrying run of results.
While the Blaugrana have been in good form in the UEFA Champions League, their recent run in La Liga has been anything but reassuring. With just five points in their last five games, Hansi Flick’s men are on their worst run yet.
To head into a massive European clash at this point, thus, feels almost terrifying. For a team that has been unable to get the better of 14th-placed Las Palmas to go up against Dortmund who are fourth on the UCL standings, after all, can be concerning.
Shaky defence to capitalise on
Injury concerns aplenty for Nuri Sahin. (Photo by Christof Koepsel/Getty Images)
Dortmund, last year’s beaten finalists in the competition, have gone strong so far but enter the game against Barcelona with an acute injury crisis.
While the Catalans themselves have been victims of a severe injury crisis since the beginning of the season, the opposition’s situation will come as a massive boost for the club that they will look to pounce on.
For the game in Germany, Nuri Sahin has just one centre-back option available as a starter in Nico Schlotterbeck. Niklas Sule and Waldemar Anton are both out injured, leaving the team’s defence shaky and making it a real target for Barcelona to exploit.
As it stands, all signs point to the manager deploying Emre Can as the centre-back alongside Schlotterbeck tomorrow but it is clear that there will be a weak-link for the Blaugrana to pressurise.
Apart from the injury crisis at the back, Maximilian Beier, Julian Brandt and Karim Adeyemi have all had shaky injury records this season. While the former will not be available tomorrow, the latter duo are fit but will likely be fielded with caution.
If Barcelona are to take three points tomorrow, it is thus vital that they strategically look to capitalise on the small voids in the German setup and it will be up to Hansi Flick to derive such a plan.
Need for freshness
It is astonishing that a team that was scoring goals for fun not too long ago has now dropped ten of the last fifteen points in La Liga but the reason is quite clear and the manager has seen the same.
The root cause for the team’s slump in form, as identified by Flick, is the lack of physical freshness and the manager sees it to be essential that all players are at their 100% and rejuvenated to maximise productivity.
It is no secret that Barcelona’s current system is highly demanding of players both on and off the ball. The high-press, high defensive line and pace-driven system requires players in top condition.
However, the schedule has slowly worn the stars out and the slump in form is thus due to a collective deficiency rather than individual errors.
To solve this problem, Flick kept players off the training field yesterday to give them the rest they require and only focused on physical training in the gym. With more emphasis on the physical intensity and time to recover, it remains to be seen how the team turns up.