Barcelona lost top spot in La Liga with a 1-1 draw with Valencia on Sunday night, dropping points for the fourth consecutive league game after Lionel Messi earned a share of the spoils with a brilliant equaliser following Ezequiel Garay’s opener.
The visiting team recovered from a terrible start, which could easily have seen Valencia double their lead, to dominate the final 75 minutes, and by the end there was only one possible winner as the hosts were continually pegged back deep inside their own half.
As we head into the international break, we look at three key stories to emerge from an enthralling contest.
A new Barca is born?
In time, this first week of October 2018 could be remembered as the birth of a new Barcelona. And the man at the centre – both literally and figuratively – of that transformation is Arthur Melo, the summer signing from Gremio who looks like rapidly becoming a fundamental part of his team’s future.
Labelling Arthur ‘the new Xavi’ is both easy and lazy due to their similar physical stature and shuffling running style, but the Brazilian’s remarkably composed and precise passing in the last couple of games has started to make the resemblance a lot more real.
Until this week, Arthur was very much a peripheral presence at his new club, only given occasional run-outs. But after seizing a starting chance with an excellent display in the midweek Champions League win at Tottenham he repeated the feat on Sunday night in Valencia, doing more than any other player to restore order to his team’s performance following a horrid start and ending up with a remarkable total of 135 completed passes – the highest total by any player in La Liga so far this season.
In the space of just two games it’s now difficult to consider how manager Ernesto Valverde can consider leaving Arthur out of his team, and the 22 year-old will surely feature heavily when Barca return from the international break for a thrilling week with games against league leaders Sevilla, Inter Milan in the Champions League and old rivals Real Madrid for the season’s first Clasico.
Pique continues to struggle
A notable feature of the season so far continued on Sunday night with another shaky performance from veteran Barca defender Gérard Pique. The long-serving centre back has been directly responsible for several opposition goals in recent weeks and failed to cover himself in glory again at Mestalla with an unconvincing display.
Firstly Pique could have done more to keep out the early corner which gave Valencia the lead, but that was a relatively forgivable lapse compared to some of his later contributions, with the hosts frequently troubling him during their fast start – one example coming when he was unable to cut out a cross from Kevin Gameiro, forcing Nelson Semedo to make a good block from Denis Cheryshev before Jose Gaya thrashed the rebound just wide.
Pique now has two full weeks to rest and recuperate following his international retirement in the wake of the World Cup, and he needs to put that time to good use to kill off the growing suggestion that he is jeopardising his position as an automatic starter for Barca. If he doesn’t improve and Samuel Umtiti makes a swift return to fitness, the question will become a serious one.
Valencia the draw specialists
Draw, draw, draw, win, draw, draw: a familiar pattern has been established in Valencia’s recent games, with Marcelino’s teams doing enough to avoid defeat but not quite enough to win.
That was certainly a fair description of their efforts against Barcelona on Sunday night, with the early hope provided by Ezequiel Garay’s second minute opener soon fading into a rearguard action as Barca fought back and took full control, forcing Valencia to spend almost the entirety of the second half camped deep inside their own half, desperately defending the edge of their penalty area.
Los Che have now drawn seven of their ten games so far this season, and that just about sums up where they are as a team. Not bad, but not particularly good either. The defensive discipline instilled by Marcelino – which restricted Barca to just a handful of half-chances despite their overwhelming dominance of possession – should serve as a solid platform, but when the action resumes after the international break they need to find a lot more going forward, because at the moment it just isn’t happening.
