FCB Great Win against Granada (6-0)

Luis Enrique finds himself in a tricky spot as Barcelona host Granada on Saturday. The team are fresh off a disappointing draw against Málaga in which they registered no shots on target – a first in over a decade – from which they must bounce back. On the other end, Barça travel to Paris next Tuesday to play Paris St-Germain in the most important fixture of their Champions League group.

 Luis Enrique must simultaneously deliver a rejuvenated performance and rotate his squad so they will be fresh against PSG. And Granada are no easy proposition. It was the toothless loss away to Granada that ended Barcelona’s winning streak last April and left the team stumbling towards the finish line. From that point on, Barça took only 9 points from their last 6 games and eventually lost the league to Atlético Madrid on the final day of the season. Even at Camp Nou, Granada have managed to cause trouble for the Catalans. A home match to Granada in 2012 was one of Tito Vilanova’s first of many comeback wins. The Andalusians shut up shop and defended for 87 minutes, and it took a last-minute bullet from substitute Xavi Hernandez to break the deadlock. La Liga veteran manager Joaquín Caparrós is leading the visitors in his debut season at Granada. Caparrós’ men have 8 points from their first 5 games, with a solid defensive record but little offense – 4 goals scored, 3 conceded. Barcelona are unlikely to have their clean sheet record broken, but scoring goals will be more of a problem for the blaugrana. In their last game, Barcelona were forced to the wings by Málaga, and with Luis Enrique’s forwards tucked in narrowly, the burden to create play fell to the fullbacks. The most astonishing statistic of the match: all of the forwards combined (Messi/Neymar/Pedro/Munir/Sandro) had a total of 143 touches on the ball; the three full-backs who featured had a whopping 216 touches all match. Luis Enrique’s team is incredibly dependent on full-backs, who are unable to dribble defenders one-on-one and destabilize defenses. Lucho’s diamond midfield has stabilized the defense, but against Granada he may want to involve some touches of the traditional Barcelona 4-3-3 in order to improve creativity in the midfield.