A unique opportunity for ever struggling Barcelona to move closer to the Champions League zone, especially after Atletico Madrid choked yet another one of their games and lost at home to Valencia (1-2).

Xavi is still working on implementation of his ideas in the Catalan capital and he’s been forced to deal with numerous obstacles, mainly in the face of endless squad issues. Infant-terrible Ousmane Dembele has been busy over scandalous negotiations over expiring contract extention. Xavi’s drawn a clear line stating he has no interest to tolerate the Frenchman as the winger is intending to leave the club. Another hot prospect, winger Ansu Fati, sustained yet another injury right upon return to fitness. So Xavi’s focus for the time being has been on maneuvering between constant squad mishaps.

Barca’s results in the meantime have been longing for consistency. They’ve yet to win 2 games in a row under Xavi, but with the trip to one of La Liga’s worst outfits Alaves the trend may finally get broken.

Hosts are rapidly getting sucked into the hole leading to Laliga Smartbank and are now winless in the league for 9 straight games. They did record decent draws on home soil recently vs. Bilbao and Real Sociedad, but were then hammered in Sevilla by Betis (0-4) and looked absolutely hopeless in the process.

I reckon Alaves will fail to regroup on such short notice and should be a similar mess to what we had seen in their last La Liga fixture.

本译文使用有道机器翻译，仅供参考：

对于苦苦挣扎的巴塞罗那来说，这是一个接近欧冠区域的独特机会，尤其是在马德里竞技又一次扼杀了他们的比赛，并在主场1-2输给瓦伦西亚之后。

哈维仍在加泰罗尼亚的首都努力实现他的想法，他被迫处理许多障碍，主要是面对没完没了的球队问题。可怕的婴儿奥斯马尼·登贝莱一直忙于与即将到期的合同延长的丑闻谈判。哈维明确表示他没有兴趣容忍法国人，因为这名边锋打算离开俱乐部。另一个热门人选，边锋安苏·法蒂，在恢复健康后又一次受伤。所以哈维目前的注意力集中在球队不断的失误之间。

与此同时，巴萨的成绩也在不断的提高。他们还没有在哈维的带领下连续赢下两场比赛，但随着客场挑战西甲最差球队之一的阿拉维斯队，这一趋势可能最终会被打破。

主队很快就被卷入了Laliga Smartbank的困境中，并且已经连续9场比赛无胜。他们最近在主场对阵毕尔巴鄂和皇家社会的比赛中取得了不错的平局，但随后在塞维利亚被贝蒂斯(0-4)击败，看起来毫无希望。

我认为阿尔维斯不会在这么短的时间内重组，应该会像我们在他们上一场西甲比赛中看到的那样一团糟。