Barcelona will resume their La Liga season with a match against Real Zaragoza at the Nou Camp on Saturday night after the International break last week that saw Spain losing out to England at the Wembley.
There has been talk of Pep Guardiola resting some of his key players ahead of the keenly anticipated Champions League clash in midweek against AC Milan after most of the Spanish stars were in action in the games against England and Costa Rica last Saturday as well as Tuesday.
With such a big match coming up, experts expect Guardiola to rest some of his top players including Fabregas, Xavi, and Lionel Messi. But, as far as I am concerned, I do not see Barca dropping their stars to preserve them for the match against AC Milan as they are behind Real Madrid in the league standings and a win on Saturday will put them on par with their fierce rivals on top of the table for at least 2 hours as Jose Mourinho and company prepare for a late kick-off.
Barcelona have not exactly had a great season so far with some poor results by their standards. Their failure to win the match against Sevilla can turn out to be a huge setback as far as the La Liga title race is concerned. With Real Madrid banging in the goals in all their games, Barcelona will need to do much better.
In their last match though, Barcelona looked quite good as they hit 5 goals that included a Leo Messi hattrick. To be honest though, Barcelona have been quite unlucky with injuries so far this season. Skipper Carles Puyol is always a doubt and there have been numerous times this season that we have seen either of Mascherano and Busquets fill in for him. Dutch acquisition Ibrahim Afellay has been sidelined with a bad injury while David Villa and Alexis Sanchez have been unlucky with injuries too.
The latest victims were defender Adriano who suffered a bad injury and will be out of action for sometime now and Javier Mascherano is a serious doubt after limping off during Argentina’s match against Columbia. I expect Messi, Pedro, and Villa to start in attack with Iniesta pulling the strings in the middle of the park alongside Busquets and Thiago Alcantara. The defense should have Gerrard Pique alongside Carles Puyol who is slated to start while Eric Abidal and Dani Alves should be the full-backs in action.
You do expect Barcelona to win big against Zaragoza. Let us hope for a cracker of a match.