Leganes vs Barcelona. Spanish La Liga.
ButarqueAttendance10,422.
Saturday 17 September 2016 11:31, UK
Luis Enrique plans to rotate his squad again as Barcelona travel to newly-promoted Leganes in La Liga on Saturday.
The defending champions made several changes last weekend as they suffered a surprise 2-1 home defeat to Alaves.
Despite the setback, head coach Luis Enrique looks set to do the same again with games coming thick and fast in the next few weeks.
"We have seven games in 23 days and the objective is to win them all," he said. "From that perspective, we do what we can do to adapt and remain effective in terms of results and taking care of players.
"Barcelona is the same, they are 11 guys wearing the same shirt. No team J, H or Z.
"Every player is aware that with a fixture list of over 60 games in a season it's practically impossible for a player to play 90 minutes in every game."
Barca responded to their defeat to Alaves by thrashing Celtic 7-0 in the Champions League in midweek.
But Luis Enrique is aware of the threat posed by Leganes, who have already held Atletico Madrid to a goalless draw at the Estadio Municipal de Butarque.
"It will be a difficult game as any away fixture is, Leganes will make life complicated for us," he said.
"They'll try to create danger and we will need to be at their level of intensity. They're a brave rival and fearless despite being a newly-promoted side, and as they showed in the game against Atleti they like to pressure the opponent.
"I'm here to remind the players of how well teams like Leganes can play. Alaves were also a team we thought were worse than us and look what happened.
"The best way to remind them of that is to look at the Alaves game. We know if we don't play at our best at Leganes, we won't win."
Luis Enrique has a fully fit squad to choose from and is set to make changes with a clash against Atletico Madrid coming up on Wednesday.
They're a brave rival and fearless despite being a newly promoted side
Leganes suffered their first defeat of the season against Sporting Gijon last weekend but head coach Asier Garitano has called for his side to maintain their belief.
"They said we were not going to score until November, but here we are, with four points from a possible nine," he said.
"The important thing is to believe in your idea of football, in your players; believe that you can win the game against Barcelona. If you do not really believe you cannot win."
Watch Leganes v Barcelona live on Sky Sports 5 HD from midday on Saturday.
