La Liga preview: FC Barcelona – Valencia CF

Dec. 2, 2008 - PRLog -- Weekend is a time for football enthusiasts. Especially La Liga has a lot to offer for a neutral viewer.  And this weekend we have another derby as  Catalan pride FC Barcelona will hosts unpleasant visitors from Valencia. Both teams are in a pretty good shape at the moment, especially Barca who has had an incredible season so far. Both teams will be striving towards victory which would further improve their chances to spend the winter among top four teams.

Some very highly priced  players will clash on the ground, the likes of Messi, Xavi and Henry for Barca and on the other side David Villa and Joaquin. However, some players willl be missing due to either injury or booking problems. Eto'o and Silva are the just two of them.

The statistics in the last ten head-to-head fixtures reveal that the teams are pretty even which predicts a very good and interesting clash. However, FC Barcelona is playing at home oracle, so it will be very hard for the visitors to snatch any points away from the Blaugrana who are currently playing probably the best football in Europe.

Pep Guardiola, will be forced to give a chance either to Bojan or Hleb in attack, as their highly prolific striker Eto'o who already scored 14 goals this season, is sidelined because of a booking problem. Barca's coach has coped with such challenges very well so far but we will see how his tactics will work against a very solid Valencia. Furthermore, Iniesta will still not be prepared to uniform the Blaugrana shirt which might add to woes of Catalan team coach.

Unai Emery has similar or even worse troubles. One of his best players, David Silva has been sidelined for the most of the season and he still won't be at his coach's disposal. Having a player of Silva's calibre would be very welcoming for the visiting side but someone else will have to step-up and take over his role.

All in all, it is a highly anticipated clash and it is very important for both teams to pull out maximum amount of points that are available. We expect attacking football with a lot of goals. It is the match of the season for Valencia as they need to retain their close pursuit after Fc Barcelona and Villarreal. This is no time for losing points. We will see which team are true competitors for this year’s trophy in next few weeks.