(Football) La Liga will not have a busy matchday 9 after Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid had their matches postponed due to many of their players having to play in the South American qualifiers. This creates a great opportunity for Barcelona to regain some ground even if it is just a psychological thing.
The Blaugrana are currently 9th on the La Liga table and they will host 8th placed Valencia. The winner could potentially climb as high as 4th on the table which makes it a very crucial game for both the clubs. Barcelona under the new board has continued to back Ronald Koeman but the big question is till how long will they do so. A loss here might put Barcelona in the bottom 10 after 8 games which is a red alert for a club of Barcelona's stature.
The Duth manager does have some good news with the return of Sergio Aguero and Ousmane Dembélé in training and the pair might be given a few minutes against Valencia. There are fresh injury problems though with Ronald Araujo picking up an injury with Uruguay. Captain Sergio Busquets and Memphis Depay played 180 minutes during the international break while midfielders Frenkie De Jong and Gavi played around 150 minutes each. Whether they are fit enough to start or not remains to be seen.
Valencia on the other hand have been handed a triple injury boost with Jose Gaya, Carlos Soler and Denis Cheryshev all expected to return to full training before the game. The trio will start the game if everything goes to plan which is very good news for Valencia. Despite missing 3 games, Soler is still Valencia's top goal scorer and top assist provider this season. Soler's presence in the center of the park will provide so much more control in the Valencia team.
