Barca's 1-1 draw away at Valencia is six points behind leaders Girona with one game in hand, and will be nine points ahead of Catalan if they beat Alaves in the bottom half of the table on Sunday night. Barcelona had lost two consecutive league games and the Champions League, and with this game it was three games without a win, and in these three games Barcelona conceded eight goals, only one less than the number of goals conceded in the previous 12 games (9).
While struggling defensively but failing to make up for it with attack, Barcelona have wasted the most chances in the first half and the whole game of Europe's top five leagues so far this season, with 23 chances wasted in the first half and 41 wasted in the whole game. After the game, coach Xavi singled out the problem of low offensive efficiency. 'It's really sad, really sad because I feel like we created a lot of chances but also missed many, many chances,' he said. ”
It's a microcosm of the whole season. Same thing as last week, the same thing happened again. We conceded two points today and we had a chance to win the game. We only got one point, which makes us very unhappy. 1 point is not enough, today is the final. The lack of efficiency is not normal, and I think it's more of a problem than poor defense. It's time to self-criticize and hold yourself higher. ”
We dominated the game, we played well, but today, unfortunately we didn't play as well as we should. Today I thought there were five, six or seven great chances but we didn't score. We need to keep going. The most important thing is to score goals and we didn't do well in that area. Now let's see what happens and we have to improve. The dressing room was as upset and disappointed as I was because we played a good game and it was enough to win. ”
Barcelona midfielder Pedri also said: "As long as we don't get three points, it's a big blow for us. We did a lot of the right things but we didn't get on the scoresheet. I think we played much better than against Girona, which we didn't play well. The Spain international said the team supported Xavi, "We stand with the coach and it's not a good moment for any of us. We must come together to turn things around. ”