Barca beat Sevilla in a nervy encounter.
It may not be arrogance to say that we have one hand firmly placed on the La Liga title following our 3-2 victory against Sevilla at the Sanchez Pizjuan stadium. At the end of penultimate week of La Liga, Barca stands one point clear of their bitter rival Real Madrid. Coming to the last four matches of the league, we had two risky away encounters against both Villareal and Sevilla. Now with those test passed, only Real Valladoid stands between FC Barcelona and the La Liga title. In the preview of this match - Barca vs Sevilla Preview, I have written about the necessity of our players being at the best. And indeed they were at their best for the first 65 minutes notching up three goals and starving Sevilla off any meaningful chance. Then in the spate of three minutes, we decided to make the encounter more interesting - conceding two goals in three minutes and almost conceding the equaliser in the end moments. But in the end the team prevailed the momentary lapse of concentration and emerged deserving winners. As expected Bojan started the match instead of Ibrahimovic. He formed the attacking trio along with Pedro and Messi. The midfield consisted of Keita, Busquets and Xavi. The defense had the expected look with Alves, Pique, Puyol and Maxwell.
FC Barcelona Dominates from the start
FC Barcelona started the match with great intensity. In the third minute Alves tested Palop with a weak shot after reaching onto a Messi pass. In the 5th minute Messi gave Barca the early lead which they were looking for. Maxwell chips the ball to Messi inside the box, who chests the ball to round off the defender and then send in a great shot beating Palop st 
his left post. In the 23rd minute Pedro gets past defender with the ball but Palop was quick to come off his line and clear; but the clearance went to Alves who drove the ball back to the centre to Pedro who unfortunately couldn't control his header. In the 28th minute Barca increased the lead via Bojan Krkic. Xavi sent Bojan through after the ball deflected to him and Bojan stood firm and finished well. God! believe me we have one hell of a striker in this kid for the future. In the 38th minute Messi missed a great opportunity to make it 3-0 when he hit a fierce cross from Alves over the bar. In the 41st minute Valdes had to pull out a one handed save to deny Kanoute from a long ball. The defense was at fault not closing him down and it was evident from Valdez reaction.
FC Barcelona started the second half with the same intensity. In the 56th minute Konko saw his second yellow card and Sevilla was reduced to ten men. In the 57th minute Messi had another shot wide off the post from an excellent Maxwell cross. In the next minute Messi missed another open chance. The move started with Messi sending Maxwell on the left, he squared the ball back to Messi in front of the goal, 
who somehow missed. The in the 59th minute Bojan saw his shot being blocked by Palop. In the 62nd minute we finally managed to make the tally 3-0 with a ferocious shot from Pedro from outside the box. Then in the 68th minute Bojan missed a sitter after a fantastic run by Messi. Then came the non-sense three minutes of play. Puyol was guilty of teh first goal when he failed to cut the ball to Kanoute and the second goal saw every one of our defenders sleeping when a quickly taken free kick put Fabiano through. That made everyone nervous and to add to that we learned that Real Madrid took the lead against Bilbao. Sevilla had another header hit the cross bar but apart from that Barca held on to the lead.
Even though we played much better than Sevilla that three minutes could have cost us dearly. We now have to win against Valladoid at Camp Nou next Sunday to retain our La Liga title. It is not going to be easy as we have both Maxwell and Xavi suspended. Add to this, Valladoid will be fighting hard to stay in the league and will give everything against us at Camp Nou. Bojan once again repaid the faith in him by getting another goal even though he could have added at least two more. Same with Messi. In the end we have to say that we weren't clinical enough with finishing. But still overall this was a great performance and we need a repeat of the same next week to round up the La Liga Title.