FC Barcelona managed to extract a sweet revenge on Hercules CF with a 3-0 victory away from home. Yes, it was yet another record night. Now we have equalled the record for most consecutive wins in La Liga. A first half goal from Pedro and two late goals from Lionel Messi gave us the 15th consecutive victory of the season. Guardiola lined up a defense consisiting of Alves, Pique, Abidal and Maxwell. The midfield as expected had Iniesta, Xavi and Busquets. The front trio was the usual one containing Villa, Messi and Pedro. Royson Drenthe was left out of starting eleven for Hercules.
In the 4th minute Xavi Hernandez had our first shot after Messi laid off the ball to him. But the attempt went way wide of the far post. In the 8th minute Villa and Messi played a neat one - two but Messi's final shot from a very tight angle was easy for the keeper to save. In the 11th minute Messi dragged another shot wide of the post after Pedro latched onto some poor clearance from hercules defenders. In the 15th minute Pedro had his shot from the edge of box tipped over. The resultant corner was a heck of a moment inside Hercules box. Dani Alves danced inside the the box and found Busquets who could have and should have gone for the goal, instead tried to pass it to Messi giving time for Hercules to re-group. In the 21st minute we had the biggest scare of the night when Nelson Valdes managed to get at the end of a long ball and played the ball to Trezuguet, who failed to finish. Both of our centre-backs was sucked out of position by the long ball.
Half an hour gone we were struggling to create straight forward chances. We had some decent half chances but Hercules was defending like their lives depend on it. Lionel Messi was having one of the worst first half I have evr seen. His first touches were constantly deserting him and was quite ineffective. In the 41st minute Pedro send in a great ball from the right to Messi in the box, once again his first touch took the ball away from him. Had he controlled that, would have been the first goal. In the 43rd minute Pedro broke the deadloack when Xavi found him unmarked in the right side inside the box. The build up included both Messi and Iniesta trying to run inside the box, but the rebound went to xavi who picked Pedro perfectly. That goal could be one of the most important he scored this season.
In the 48th minute Villa cut inside on the edge of box but dragged the shot just wide of the near post. In the 50th minute Xavi saw his shot go wide from the edge of the box. Hercules was trying to utilize the height advantage of their two forwards - Trezeguet and Nelson Valdes, and it was kind of working also. In the 64th minute Pedro had a goal disallowed for offside. In the 68th minute Busquets played a delightful ball to Messi in the box, who turned well but put the ball just wide of the post. The very next minute he had another shot going wide. In the 76th minute Lionel Messi saw his great shot from the edge of box saved by the keeper. In the 82nd minute we had another scare when Maxwell took it wasy on the left, but Abidal did well to save the blues. In the 84th minute Villa wasted a great oppurtunity to seal the match whe he failed to control a great ball from Pedro on the break. In the 87th minute Messi finished off the match after skipping away from a number of challenges and then finishing it into the right corner. To that moment he had a very, very poor match. In the 89th minute Messi scored yet another. Messi as usual lost the ball inside the box, Nolito who came as a substitute a minute before picked the rebound and found Iniesta, who found Alves on the right who crossed into the box to find Messi.
This victory was quite a struggle for us. The tireless defending from Hercules made the night very difficult, but it was hugely contributed by a host of players having an average game. Messi despite scoring two goals was the worst of all the attacking players. Villa was missing, Iniesta had an On-Off game. Pedro was briliant, Abidal, Busquets and Pique was solid but the Man of the Mathc for me was Xavi Hernandez. I have to admit that this victory gave me so much pleasure. Not because it was kind of revenge, not because Real Madrid was really banking on this match, because this was a match which resembled a surgical operation being performed. We kept on hitting again and again till we succeeded. So the pressure is back very much on Real Madrid, who has a seven point lead to catch up.