Barcelona likely to have too many guns for Basque outfit Athletic Bilbao tonight
Barcelona face a trip to San Mames this evening as they attempt to keep tabs on Real Madrid, who went four points clear at the summit of La Liga with a resounding 7-1 victory over Osasuna earlier today. In facing Athletic Bilbao at the Basque Barca won’t have things all their own way, but they should ultimately have too many guns for their hosts.
Indeed, the Blaugrana have made a couple of minor slip-ups this term – the most recent being when held to a goalless draw at the Camp Nou against Sevilla on October 22 – but they remain unbeaten in all competitions this season, and in beating Viktoria Plzen 4-0 in their Champions League match in midweek, the Catalan club made it 787 minutes of football without conceding. Pretty impressive, even by Barcelona’s exalted standards.
Pep Guardiola will have to make do without Pedro and Ibrahim Afellay, but otherwise has pretty much a full-strength squad to choose from. One suspects that he will once again deploy Cesc Fabregas and Lionel Messi in support of lone out-and-out striker David Villa. Messi continued to work his magic in midweek, netting a hat-trick against Plzen, and it’s little surprise that he’s generally a 2-1 chance to open the scoring tonight.
Bilbao have scored in each of their seven matches overall at the Estadio San Mamés this season, so Marcelo Beilsa’s men will fancy their chances of ending Barca’s phenomenal run of clean sheets, but given the visitors’ goals-per-game ratio (they’re averaging around 2.5 per game so far this term), they’ll probably need to put a few past Victor Valdes in order to get anything from this fixture. An unenviable task – perhaps an insurmountable one – awaits Bilbao.
I reckon they’ll score, but probably only once, and the advice is to back Barcelona to win 3-1, which is a standout 11-1 with Unibet at the time of writing.