Catalan clubs in good shape

Barça

It was a bit­ter­sweet month for Xavi’s side, hav­ing racked up four more league wins to ex­tend their lead at the top of La Liga and put them­selves in pole po­si­tion for a first league win in four years, only to get knocked out of Eu­ro­pean com­pe­ti­tion for the sec­ond time this sea­son be­fore los­ing the last league game of the month with a mis­er­able per­for­mance away at lowly Alme­ria.

It was Eu­rope that once again brought a shud­der­ing halt to Barça’s im­pe­ri­ous form, since im­pres­sive wins at Betis (1-2) and Vil­lar­real (0-1) and a con­vinc­ing 3-0 drub­bing of Sevilla at the Camp Nou where fol­lowed by a 2-2 home draw with Ten Haag’s in-form Man­ches­ter United. Al­though the next game brought three more points with a 2-0 home de­feat of Cádiz to briefly send Barça more than 10 points clear at the top of La Liga, the sub­se­quent visit to Man­ches­ter saw a 2-1 de­feat and exit from the Eu­ropa League, with Gavi and Pedri’s ab­sence (the for­mer sus­pended and the lat­ter in­jured) per­haps the dif­fer­ence be­tween the two sides.

With 15 league games left to play, the seven-point lead over Madrid in the league will seem smaller than it should have been fol­low­ing “the worst per­for­mance of the sea­son” at Alme­ria. In­deed, the up­com­ing two-legged King’s Cup semi-final against Real Madrid will be a fur­ther test of Barça’s tro­phy-win­ning cre­den­tials, es­pe­cially after An­celotti’s side came back from a 2-0 deficit to de­mol­ish Liv­er­pool 5-2 at An­field in the Cham­pi­ons League re­cently.

Es­panyol

Feb­ru­ary saw Es­panyol take 7 of the 12 league points on offer thanks to nar­row wins over Elche (0-1) and Mal­lorca (2-1) in the last two games of the month. Given that three of the four games were at the RCDE Sta­dium and the one away game at the bot­tom-placed club, fans will be for­given for hav­ing wanted even more, though 27 points and 12th place at this stage of the sea­son does at least seem to offer the hope that there will be no rel­e­ga­tion bat­tle this year.

Girona

What a month for Míchel’s men. De­spite a dis­ap­point­ing 2-0 de­feat at Cádiz, who seem to only win at home and lose away, Girona earned nine points from the 12 avail­able in Feb­ru­ary with home wins over Va­len­cia (1-0) and Alme­ria (6-2) and a won­der­fully un­ex­pected 2-3 vic­tory at San Mamés, al­ways one of the more test­ing grounds to visit in La Liga. That leaves Girona in a very com­fort­able 11th place in the league, and bar­ring any sud­den hic­coughs, Michel’s side can head into the final stretch look­ing up at the Eu­ro­pean places rather than below them at the rel­e­ga­tion fight.