Barcelona vs Athletic Bilbao

Reigning La Liga champions Barcelona will seek redemption for a slip-up against Girona when they meet Athletic Bilbao at the Estadio Olímpico.

Despite conceding the earliest La Liga goal in the 21st century, Barcelona recovered from a 17th-second deficit to hold Girona to a 2-2 away draw just before the international break, seeing what would’ve been a stoppage-time winner disallowed by VAR. Although that result made them the only La Liga side to start this round without a single league loss this season (W6, D3), Xavi Hernandez’s men do trail table-topping Real Madrid by three points. Athletic Bilbao’s visit to Catalonia is the perfect chance for the ‘Blaugrana’ to return to winning ways, considering they last lost a home league encounter against this opposition in 2001! Since that upset, they’ve claimed 55 of the 57 points on offer in home top-flight H2Hs, winning the last by the same 4-0 scoreline.

In the meantime, Athletic Bilbao seized the opportunity to arrest a two-game winless league run (D1, L1) before the break, overcoming basement boys Almeria 3-0 at home to whittle down the gap on the top four to only four points. However, Ernesto Valverde’s men have blown hot and cold on the road this season, alternating between winning (2) and not (D1, L1) on their four La Liga travels thus far. Low scoring has been a common theme, with each of those four matches seeing one or both teams fail to score and three featuring under 2.5 goals. Since three of their last four league visits to Barcelona yielded a scoring blank, ‘Los Leones’ might doubt their chances of adding to their disappointing four-goal tally away from home.