Betis - Barça. Sunday at 21:00 CET

Betis XI: Guille Sara, Steinhöfer, Caro, Jordi Figueras, Nacho, Xavi Torres, Nono, Vadillo, Verdú, Juan Carlos and Jorge Molina

Barça's XI: Valdés, Alves, Bartra, Puyol, Montoya, Song, Xavi, Cesc, Pedro, Messi and Neymar

Tough match for Barcelona. Betis are giant killers and have caused plenty of problems for Barcelona in the past few seasons. Their position at the bottom of the league should not deceive clués into thinking this will be a walk in the park. Yet with the starting 11 I see, I think it has deceived Martino.

I have huge respect for Betis. Great team, and very entertaining.

aaaaaaaand...... no messi

Messi injured...

Kinda feel bad for the guy... seems at the end of last season the injury roll really started..

Just turned no the game. What happened with Messi? Did it look bad? Details please...

Betis defender almost broke his feet. But no complain by Messi about the foul. Strange

Almost broke his foot??
Um, SLIGHT exaggeration.

RonaldoGreatestEverRM wrote:Almost broke his foot??
Um, SLIGHT exaggeration.

Side kicks on the leg like that are dangerous, but i agree, it is exaggerated to say almost broke his foot.

Ronaldo fan came here to celebrate messi's injury?

People will probably go madshit again because of 56 % possession, no control blablabla but look at that f*cking pitch.



It's painted with green colour, fss. Completely pointless to try and tiki-taka your way through.

His foot? Did I miss something? Looked to me like it was some nasty studs to his thigh.

Dat pitch tho...

Glad Betis is gonna lose. Assholes have been hacking Neymar all match

most physical game I've watched in days

Neymar is really unselfish at times. I know he tries to do it for the team but sometimes it's better if he goes on to take a shot himself. Much better chance of scoring than passing it to someone else.

I do remember one instance he passed it to Pedro when he really should have shot.

At this point I wonder if it's unselfishness or him not being confident in finishing. I think it's unselfishness, but with his finishing being the way it has been, I'm not sure.

Dumbass penalty to give away from Alves

Don't get me wrong I like Pepe Mel's attacking style but his underdog/aggressive tactics are as bad as Mourinho or Tony Pulis.

Really worried about Messi. If Martino loves Argentina he should give Messi a couple of months' rest.

4Th muscle injury from Messi under Tata in 4 months. Ridiculous.

Awful performance from the ref in my opinion.

He wasnt giving any but the most blatant fouls, players (both teams) were holding, pulling, delaying and impeding players and the ref did nothing.

I get it, he thinks some of our players go down easily and thats not totally untrue, but in his apparent mission to stop it there were at least half a dozen to ten fouls which went without any freekick.

As for the performance, it was clear the pitch was in a terrible condition so I have some sympathy. They gave us alot of problems in defence and bar the individual efforts of Song and Bartra we struggled as a unit at times and it took some great Valdes saves once again.

I agree with RG about Neymar. I have a feeling he doesnt want to be a too dominant figure in an already established team and passes up shots for passes he normally would not. Understandable and I dont expect it to long, I trust his decision making.

He had some other chances, got a little unlucky, for example the 2 point blank efforts that goalie saved. Little space either side of the keeper and he managed to get in the way.

TBH a better result than a performance but I will take it. Some fantastic passes from Song, Iniesta and Alves in 3 of the goals. Only Alves gets the assist in them, but Iniesta and Song really made the goals with some great passes.

Bartra is our best CB and every game he doesn't start it's unfair.

Awesome goal from Pedro, if that goal was Messi or Neymar would be everywhere.

A pity Neymar and Pedro missed a couple of good chances, we could have scored 7.

Very disappointed with Martino when it comes to Messi management. Ridiculous, really. Thanks for making him press and run himself down.

Messi's injuries are also down to Pep playing him every minute of every game.... it was going to catch up to him eventually.

I'm sure Tata takes some blame as well but its ridiculous to absolve Pep of zero blame but i'm not surprised can't question the motives of one of your own so has to be the foreigners fault.

Messi didnt press at all today, he was in super strolling mode from minute 1. Today's injury was either fall over from his last one or nothing to do with pressing, pick one.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Messi's injuries are also down to Pep playing him every minute of every game.... it was going to catch up to him eventually.

I'm sure Tata takes some blame as well but its ridiculous to absolve Pep of zero blame but i'm not surprised can't question the motives of one of your own so has to be the foreigners fault.

No it doesn't, muscles fatigue doesn't last more than some weeks, months at very most. Everyone who knows something about fitness knows that.