Bilbao are one of the Spanish clubs whose performances vary massively between home and away games, but their opener away at Elche was such horror - mostly down to injuries - that we can look for a big win this for the Barcelona side who gave a superb performance!

Indeed, the less one says about the Elche game the better, the 0-0 score describes it well. Bilbao were without several defensive players who also help in building up the play, and veteran striker Raul Garcia was suspended. He returns today, and is likely to start alongside Williams. There were glimpses of good combination play in the right flank but only a few real goal chances were created, and it was against last season's clearly weakest team! Bilbao lost even the xG-statistics and had only about 0.6 goals worth of chances, without any top ones.

Today the lineups at both camps are very similar to the first round, the big difference naturally is that there are thousands of home supporters finally at San Mames!

Barcelona could had won their match vs strong Real Sociedad side by 4,5-0, but a few individual excellent goals after 3-0 made the scoreline look tighter than it should.

As the chart below shows Barcelona created chances one after another, and they were good ones as Depay, Griezmann and Braithwaite found each other magically. There were the usual runs into the box by Alba, the brilliance of De Jong and Busquets and all attacking Barcelona players seemed relieved and motivated to show what they can do without Messi.

I am not saying that Barca are better without Messi and Bilbao coach Marcelino said he is pleased not to have to play against him anymore as he has been the match winner by himself so many times, but without Messi Barca are now firing more from all directions, and as also Braithwaite shone there are runners, dribblers, scorers and passers all over the pitch and Barcelona are a joy to follow even if you do not like the team.

Disclaimer, I am no fan of Barcelona or any other team as such, I like the teams who play well and currently Barcelona look like the biggest title contender in Spain.

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本译文使用有道机器翻译，仅供参考：

毕尔巴鄂是西班牙的俱乐部之一，他们的表现在主客场比赛中有很大的差异，但他们在埃尔什的首场比赛是如此的可怕——大部分是由于伤病——我们可以期待巴塞罗那的一场大胜利，因为他们的表现非常出色!

的确，人们对埃尔切比赛说得越少越好，0-0的比分很好地描述了这场比赛。毕尔巴鄂缺少了几名防守球员，他们也帮助球队加强了进攻，老将劳尔·加西亚也被停赛。他今天会回来，很可能会和威廉姆斯一起首发。在右路有一些不错的组合，但只创造了几个真正的进球机会，而且是对阵上赛季最弱的球队!毕尔巴鄂甚至失去了xg统计，只有大约0.6个进球的机会，没有一个顶级的。

今天两个阵营的阵容都非常类似于第一轮，最大的不同自然是有成千上万的主场支持者终于来到了圣梅斯!

巴塞罗那本可以以4 - 5-0的比分战胜强大的皇家社会，但在3-0之后，一些个人的精彩进球让比分看起来更紧了。

如下图所示，巴塞罗那创造了一个又一个机会，而且都是很好的机会，因为德佩、格里兹曼和布雷斯韦特神奇地找到了对方。阿尔巴像往常一样冲进禁区，德容和布斯克茨的才华和巴塞罗那所有的进攻球员似乎都松了一口气，并有动力展示他们在没有梅西的情况下能做什么。

我不是说,如果没有梅西,巴萨更好和毕尔巴鄂教练Marcelino说他很高兴对他不玩了,因为他已经被自己很多次比赛冠军,但没有梅西的巴萨现在解雇更多的从四面八方,还布雷斯韦特照有跑步,运球前进的人,球场上到处都是射手和传球者，即使你不喜欢这支球队，追随巴塞罗那也是一种乐趣。

免责声明，我不是巴塞罗那或其他任何球队的球迷，我喜欢踢得好的球队，目前巴塞罗那看起来是西班牙最大的冠军争夺者。

预测比分1:4。