After Barcelona’s 8-2 victory over SD Huesca, I mentioned that their defense could be more concerning than anything they’d done in the final third. While this was only an issue of a few shots from a single match, it seemed to paint a broader picture than being an anomaly from the early season. At that point in the season, they were allowing one shot with an xG of 0.33 or higher per match – and two of those three were valued at 0.5 xG or higher. Aside from the season opener against Alaves, the defense had struggled against relatively bad attacks. Still, that was just through three matches – and could very well just be the case of one or two bad matches. However, in their two league matches since, things appear to have gotten worse – not better.
So far, Barca has played some of the weakest offenses in La Liga. Aside from their matches against Barcelona, their opponents (Alaves, Real Valladolid, SD Huesca, Real Sociedad, and Girona) are all in the bottom eight La Liga in expected goals forced per match – with four of them falling in the bottom five. Their opponents are some of the worst attacking teams in La Liga, and still Barcelona is conceding a concerning number of high quality opportunities.
To see this issue better, we can look at the number of high quality chances each team in Spain has conceded. I split these high quality chances into two buckets: huge chances (shots with an xG greater than 50%) and big chances (shots with an xG greater than 33%). Barca tie with six other teams for 9th with three huge chances conceded and with four other teams for 10th with seven big chances. This doesn’t paint the full picture, though. Barcelona have been out of possession less than any other team in Spain, which means their defense has the least amount of time to concede such large chances (after all, an opponent can’t attack if they’re not in possession). To account for this, I divided the minutes out of possession by the number of chances conceded – which paints a significantly different picture. Barca move from a tie for 9th in huge chances conceded to 5th – allowing a 0.5 xG shot roughly once every 45 minutes while out of possession. For big chances, they move from a tie for 10th to 3rd – allowing a 0.33 xG shot roughly once every 19 minutes while out of possession.
Of course, none of this is to say Barcelona aren’t a good team. They still create the most big chances – even after adjusting for possession – and they create huge chances more than they concede them. Those are positive signs, and indicate that – on the whole – they’re not at serious risk. Still, it’s hard to ignore the number of quality chances they’ve conceded to such weak attacking teams. Without something changing in their defensive system, it’s hard to see replicating their success against teams with quality attacks.
* xG data courtesy of understat, possession data courtesy of WhoScored
Box-to-Box Analytics 