Miserable Mathieu
Luis Enrique inexplicably withdrew the reliable Jordi Alba with Barca leading 2-0 in place of Jeremy Mathieu. The Frenchman’s first contribution was a woeful clearance that setup the move for Perez’s opener, then he was guilty of ball watching and not getting anywhere near Alex for the equaliser. In 13 minutes he put in an absolutely pitiful defensive effort that cost his side dearly.
Missing Neymar
One constant this season has been the superb form of Neymar, but the Brazilian’s absence for the visit of Deportivo was telling. Sandro Ramirez came in to replace his fellow countryman and was hugely unconvincing before being replaced by Munir El Haddadi with 20 minutes to go. Ramirez’ only real contribution was to setup a first-half chance that was squandered by Luis Suarez when the youngster should have gone for goal himself. Barca will want Neymar to recover from injury as quickly as possible to get back to winning ways.
Lionel Messi has now scored 18 goals from direct free kicks for Barcelona, just one fewer than Ronaldinho. pic.twitter.com/cgaZfDpUzv
— Squawka Football (@Squawka) December 12, 2015
Messi’s free-kick brilliance
When the rest of the team is lacking sharpness and quality you can always rely on the little Argentinian to step up. Messi almost salvaged three points for Barca with a superb curling free-kick late on at Valencia last week. But he opened the scoring against Deportivo with an almost mirror image effort, which curled superbly into the top right hand corner to give German Lux no chance.
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