Barcelona vs Sevilla, 2016 La Liga

TEAM NEWS

BARCELONA

The headline news coming out of training this morning was that Rafinha Alcantara took part in a small amount of work with the group for the first time since suffering a knee injury that could have kept him out for the rest of the season. It’s only the first step really in working with the ball, but he has to start somewhere and it’s good to know that his recovery is coming along well – and ahead of schedule.

Typically, this is the type of match that we would see the strongest line-up – Sevilla are an excellent side after all – but with the Arsenal match taking a lot out of the team in midweek, I think we’ll see a couple of changes

In defense, I suspect that Aleix Vidal may get the start against his former club as Enrique could make just one change to the backline that held firm and kept a valuable clean sheet against Arsenal on Tuesday. That would mean successive starts for Gerard Pique, Jordi Alba and Javier Mascherano – who is perhaps the only other question mark if Enrique wishes to continue his rotation with Jeremy Mathieu.


SEVILLA

I touched on it earlier, but to recap the biggest piece of Sevilla team news, Ever Banega is suspended. He's arguably their best player as well, or at least one of their most influential, so that's good news for the Blaugrana. Factor in their away form and well, it's not looking all too promising for them tomorrow.

Then again, Sevilla have easily been our toughest opponent this season. Atletico have been tough, but beatable. Real... well you know, lol. Arsenal gave us one heck of a game but we did win and win relatively handily by the end of the night. Sevilla on the other hand have averaged 3 goals per game against us this season, by forcing us to extra time in the UEFA Super Cup and then easily beating us at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan.

So I'm not prepared to write them off just yet.