La Liga: FC Barcelona 2-0 Valencia CF: Player Ratings

By Bostjan Cernensek, Sam Cooper, and Ahmed Shahin on Apr 20, 
2015
A detailed, player-by-player breakdown of Barcelona's hard-fought La Liga win against Valencia.
Bravo was one of the stars in this game. Even though he "only" ended the game with two saves, each one of them proved to be necessary for Barcelona to secure the three points. The highlight of his performance was the save he made on Dani Parejo’s penalty attempt early in the game. Bravo also made a lovely diving save late in the game on Rodrigo Moreno, but he also had to give a friendly love tap to his right post for bailing him out in the first half. Bravo exhibited good control of the air space, collecting numerous crosses. The Chilean picked up a late yellow card for wasting time.
Dani Alves
Another game, another mixed showing. It’s becoming really infuriating that in the same game Alves can show glimpses of his brilliant old self and be a turnover machine. Alves, by far, led the team in tackles, he completed an astonishing ten tackles, the next closest Barcelona player had four. But while that might insinuate on a dominating defensive game by the Brazilian, it was anything but as Alves often struggled in defensive coverage. As expected, Alves didn’t struggle as much on offense where he combined with his teammates very well, though he had the second worst passing accuracy of all Barcelona players.
Gerard Pique

Should we be getting worried about Pique? This was his second consecutive shaky game in La Liga, though he made even more mistakes in this one than he made againstSevilla. Pique improved in the second half, in which he made a couple of good plays, but the first half was beyond poor. Not only did he carelessly gave up a penalty kick, he also made several poor choices with the ball, none worse than in the 21st minute when he bone-headedly attempted a diagonal pass only to have it intercepted, resulting in two dangerous scoring chances.
Jeremy Mathieu

Like most of his teammates in the backline, Mathieu also struggled in the first half. In it we saw the return of the "panicky Mathieu" who loves to "clear" the ball to the closest opponent, a couple times gifting chances to Valencia in the first half. Mathieu cleaned up his act after the break when he moved to the left-back position, where he looked much more comfortable than he did in some game against some team playing in white. The Frenchman didn’t get forward much, but when he did he combined with his teammates solidly.

Adriano Correia To say that Adriano struggled in the 45 minute he spent on the pitch would be an understatement. He often strayed out of position, something he continuously tried to correct by fouling Valencia players, giving them numerous chances to score from set-pieces, resulting in a yellow card. Though I have to give him credit for making a crucial block on Sofiane Feghouli around the half-hour mark. Adriano also offered very little in attack.