Barcelona struggles continue after being held by Valencia

Barcelona’s week became all the more challenging for Xavi as he watched his team drop yet more points in the LaLiga EA Sports title race with a 1-1 draw away to Valencia.

Blaugrana fans headed into Saturday evening’s fixture hoping the team would right the wrongs from their midweek display, as well as last weekend’s defeat to Girona, and put together a fine performance against Los Che.

However, following the defeat to Royal Antwerp, which featured numerous defensive mistakes, Barcelona let a one-goal lead slip away to Valencia.

The result leaves Xavi’s side on the outside of the title race looking in, with the club four points behind Real Madrid and six points behind league leaders Girona.

There is also the small matter of the fact that the Catalan giants have played a game more than both of their domestic rivals, meaning that by the end of the weekend they could well be six and eight points adrift respectively.

What went wrong for Barcelona?

The match actually started in a positive fashion for Los Cules as they were aggressive out of the starting blocks.

However, Valencia landed the first real blow of note in the game when Roman Yaremchuk fired a shot towards Barcelona’s goal, yet Inaki Pena was able to parry it to safety.

Frenkie de Jong was then called into action to make a well-timed defensive block from a Hugo Duro strike, even though the visitors were controlling possession.

Robert Lewandowski had Barcelona’s best chance of the first-half to that point, firing a powerful drive straight at Giorgi Mamardashvili in the Valencia goal.

Pedri then fired a shot wide from outside the box after a clever lay-off from Joao Felix.

Felix then turned goalscorer in the 55th minute, opening the scoring with a well-taken goal. De Jong started the move with a raking pass across the pitch which found Raphinha.

The Brazilian then ran at his opposite number and produced a cross into the middle.

Felix was first to it and tapped the ball home from close-range, stunning the Mestalla into silence.

It took Valencia 15 minutes to equalize, with their goal coming through Hugo Guillamon, who netted his first of the season with a strike from distance.

Barcelona were poor defensively, carrying on from their trip to Belgium, and a failure to deal with a bouncing ball in the build-up to Valencia’s goal was costly.