Wednesday 22 November 2017 13:25, UK
The top two meet in La Liga on Sunday but can Valencia upset Barcelona at Mestalla? Guillem Balague analyses the clash with the help of the stats...
The stalemate in the Madrid derby on Saturday leaves both clubs 10 points behind Barcelona in La Liga. The title race is all but over then, right?
Not quite, because the team in second is not from the Spanish capital.
Valencia are the ones chasing Barca and after beating Espanyol 2-0 on Sunday, they remain only four points behind the leaders.
What's more, the top two meet at Mestalla this weekend.
Nobody in Valencia is talking about the title just yet. Well, not publicly at least. Privately, players are wondering, why not?
What everybody wants to find out is how they will cope against Barcelona. So how have Valencia done it so far?
The first thing to say is that it is not luck. Barcelona are the top scorers with 33 goals but Valencia are only one behind them on 32.
Valencia's shot conversion rate has been extraordinary. They have scored with 21 per cent of their shots this season - the best of any team in La Liga.
These two teams are the entertainers. And like Barcelona under Ernesto Valverde, Valencia have a new manager who is unbeaten in La Liga since arriving in the summer.
Marcelino has made some big changes to the team and huge credit must go to Valencia's new CEO Mateu Alemany for deciding to bring him in.
The leadership shown by Gabriel, Ezequiel Garay and Geoffrey Kondogbia is important, but it is the way that Marcelino is pushing the players that has been the big difference.
The triple training sessions in pre-season were accepted by a group of players who had just had a terrible year and wanted to leave all that behind.
It has worked. Goncalo Guedes, the young loan signing from PSG, has shown real quality. He has been involved in eight goals in only 699 minutes on the pitch.
Rodrigo has been just as impressive in his role as the support striker to Simone Zaza, contributing to 10 goals in 915 minutes.
Of the players involved in eight or more goals this season, only Lionel Messi has directly contributed to a goal more regularly than Rodrigo and Guedes.
And Marcelino is not letting either of them rest on their laurels. They are two players who are getting extra instructions, extra demands. Marcelino knows they can give even more.
If there is a weakness for Valencia, it is perhaps a lack of pace out wide where Carlos Soler has been doing a good job in a new position on the right of midfield.
Whoever plays there will have a particularly difficult task on Sunday because they will find themselves up against former Valencia full-back Jordi Alba.
Of course, Lionel Messi is still the key man for Barcelona - but Alba has assisted four of Messi's goals already. It is the most common goal combination in La Liga this season.
There is no denying Barcelona have had a superb start to the season, but there are still those wondering just how good this team really is.
The average league position of the teams that Barcelona have played this season is 12.5 compared to an average of 11.2 for Valencia.
In fact, Valverde has had only two league games so far against teams in the top seven positions - the narrow 2-1 home win over Sevilla and the draw against Atletico Madrid.
Barcelona were also beaten home and away by Real Madrid in the Super Cup just weeks before Valencia went there and earned a 2-2 draw.
Yes, this will be Barcelona's toughest test yet. In front of a packed Mestalla, we will find out a lot more about what both of these teams are capable of this season.
