Barcelona high-fives and football’s self-appointed celebration police

If football’s self-appointed celebration police thought Arsenal’s players had overdone it on the happiness front after their 1-0 win at Aston Villa on Saturday, the Fiver shudders to think of what they’d have made of the sight of assorted Barcelona players grinning maniacally, high-fiving each other and generally looking delighted with life last night. After all, ending a game 12 points behind the league leaders with just 10 games to go is nothing to get excited about unless it’s some kind of statement result.

Well, if spanking four without reply past your bitterest rivals on their own patch isn’t a reason to be cheerful on a Sunday evening, then the Fiver doesn’t quite know what is. And that’s exactly what Barça did on their first visit to the Bernabéu under Xavi, swatting Real Madrid aside like they weren’t there. Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang scored twice, with Ronald Araújo and Ferran Torres bagging a goal apiece in a bona fide rout; the visitors could and probably should have scored several more.

It wasn’t bad for a club who were in all sorts of turmoil before Xavi returned to manage the club six years after his 767th game for them as a player. Last night wasn’t just a welcome clásico win but an emphatic victory after five straight defeats and served up in a style the manager insists is non-negotiable. “We are back,” announced Gerard Piqué on social media in the game’s aftermath, in the kind of triumphant scenes last spotted online when Newcastle scraped a 1-0 win over Burnley back in December.

“Maybe we can say we’re back,” said Xavi, who wasn’t quite as ready as his players to count his chickens. “This is the path to follow. This is the way we want to play. It was a complete performance. We were much better than