Barcelona vs Mallorca

Barcelona’s final home match of the 2022/23 La Liga season pits them against bottom-half Mallorca this weekend.

Complacency has seemingly caught up with Barcelona since arresting a four-year title drought in La Liga as they’ve lost back-to-back league matches since being crowned the Spanish champions for the first time since 2018/19. A 3-1 defeat at Valladolid in midweek La Liga action marked Barca’s third straight top-flight game without a clean sheet, while it was only the second time in 37 league matches in 2022/23 that they conceded more than once. Back to Camp Nou for a straightforward-looking clash against Mallorca, Xavi Hernandez’s men are looking to make amends for recent slip-ups by extending a handsomely-looking ten-game H2H winning run in La Liga. Impressively, the ‘Blaugrana’ have scored in each of their last 27 top-flight meetings with Mallorca, averaging 2.7 goals per game.

Meanwhile, since a 1-1 home draw against Athletic Bilbao in early May, Mallorca have alternated between winning (2) and losing (2) in their last four league matches, with three of those four results (wins/losses) seeing the victor keep a clean sheet. However, there’s nothing pretty about Mallorca’s recent travel record, as they’ve lost their last three away league games by an aggregate score of 8-1, conceding in both halves on each occasion. By extension, ‘Los Piratas’ have suffered a staggering nine defeats on their previous 11 top-flight travels (W1, D1), shipping 2+ goals eight times in this run. That’s not what Javier Aguirre hopes for as his men head to Camp Nou, where they’ve taken points only once in their last 12 La Liga outings (W1, D1, L10).