Week23: Gijon break Barca's record

Sporting Gijon 1-1 Barcelona
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Sporting Gijon 1 - 1 Barcelona

Last night, Gijon did the unthinkable and had the audacity to not lose to Barcelona. The game, which included two exquisite goals, ended Barca's 16 game winning streak. Forzafutbal have a great follow up piece telling us that we should not be all that surprised as Gijon have a wonderful ability to stick such spanners in the works. Of course, before their 3-0 defeat at Bilbao last week, they had previously thrashed Mallorca 4-0 in their own back yard and gave Atletico a surprise defeat courtesy of David Barral (see week 20). It was Barral again who gave Gijon the lead in this game, only for Villa to restore parity 10 minutes before time.

The fantasy stats from the game suggest Gijon truly snuffed out the Barca threat with the champions barely mustering a shot on target. It is a rare occasion where no Barcelona player scores more than 15 pts and a  few negative Fantasy Points records were broken for Barca:

Dropping Pedro a big mistake

• Victor Valdes (-5.5) and Pedro (eulogised by Sid Lowe this weekend) (-1.5) scored negative points for the first time of the season. 

It was the first time since week 15 that Pedro didn't manage a shot on target. Pedro started the game on the bench in the place of new signing Ibrahim Affellay. The dutch winger posted a negative return of -3. Pedro replaced Affellay at half time, but didn't manage any better. Dani Alves also scored a dismal 2.5, his worst score of the season.

All in all, the stats suggest Gijon did something tactically excellent in nullifying Barca's wing attack: something Arsenal will need to look at if they have any hope of overcoming Barca in their upcoming Champions League meetings.

• Messi scored 13 points. His lowest total in a game he's started since week 13.

• Also, despite scoring a goal, David Villa only got 10.5 points, on a return for a player worth 25. He's only scored more than 15 pts once since week 16.