Pedri the 'leader’, Ousmane Dembele the ‘game-changer’ – Why Barcelona are on the right path under Xavi

Whisper it, but Barcelona might be back. Okay so that might be a little bit of a stretch. But seriously Barcelona’s form is pretty impressive.

Following Sunday night’s 4-0 hammering of Athletic Club, Barca are now unbeaten since the end of January (ironically when they were knocked out of the Copa del Rey by Athletic) and they have scored four goals in four of their last six matches. Ad/> There were impressive wins too — beating Atletico Madrid, Napoli, Valencia and Athletic is no mean feat. LigaAubameyang scores again as Barcelona cruise past Athletic Club17 HOURS AGO So with the help of Eurosport Spain colleague Andres Weiss, let’s take a look at what’s been going on.

Xavi era getting better and better Did you know that since Xavi’s arrival to replace Ronald Koeman, Barcelona are second (behind Real Madrid) in points earned? They’ve taken 28 out of a possible 36 and are now into the last 16 of the Europa League. Of course this isn’t the Barcelona of old but we shouldn’t be comparing them to the teams we remember. We need to instead keep in mind the mess that Xavi, and to a lesser extent Joan Laporta, inherited.

This a rebuild and so far it’s going pretty well. «I think it's getting better and better,” agrees Weiss. “Not qualifying to the next round of the Champions League and Copa del Rey can be seen as a failure, but Xavi has the team in a way better place than where Koeman had it.

“His style of play is a mixture between „Gegenpressing“, where Gavi's succeeding stealing a lot of balls, and the typical Barcelona's „positional“ game.» The last point is really key. The evolution of Xavi in the past few months is important and impressive to watch. At times in the early stages it almost looked like he was trying to go full