Barcelona 2-1 Sevilla - 5 Talking Points
Barcelona recorded a narrow 2-1 win over Sevilla courtesy of Paco Alcacer's brace to maintain their 4-point lead at the summit of the La Liga table. The Blaugrana have had a near perfect start to the season, despite losing Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain earlier in the summer.
Alcacer proved to be the unlikely hero, as he netted in either half to hand the win to Ernesto Valverde's side. Guido Pizarro scored the only goal for the Seville outfit and forced Barcelona to be on the back foot, at least for a little while.
Let's take a look at the major talking points from the feisty encounter:
#1 Barcelona are in crisis, really?
In August, nothing was going according to plan for Barcelona. They had lost one of the best players in the world in the form of Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain and had suffered back-to-back defeats against arch-rivals Real Madrid in the Spanish Super Cup, which led to the talks of the decline of Messi's Barcelona once again.
More than two and a half months later and you would be forced to believe that nothing was ever wrong in Catalunya.
In the 16 games played across all competitions since THAT loss to Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu, Barcelona have won 14, while having drawn the remaining two games, and not just that, they have swept aside teams in this time period with relative ease.
Such has been the impressive form the Camp Nou outfit that they have equalled their best ever start to a La Liga season, having accrued 31 points from their first 11 games - a feat that they had previously managed in 2012/13 and 2013/14.
While this has much to do with the brilliance of Lionel Messi, who has played like a man possessed, credit is due to the entire team and especially the manager, for first stabilizing the ship in turbulent times and then steadily driving it forward.
While the crisis talks were not exactly premature back then, they certainly seem that way now as the Catalan outfit are simply cruising, grinding out hard-fought wins every now and then. It has come to a point where one would be forgiven to believe that everything was always fine at Barcelona.