Rival watch: Villarreal main man expected to miss the Barcelona encounter on Sunday

Barcelona have received a huge boost ahead of their away game against Villarreal in La Liga, with a report from Diario SPORT claiming that a certain Gerard Moreno could miss the fixture on Sunday.

The outlet claims that there were several setbacks in Villarreal’s training camp recently. As it turns out, Moreno did not participate in the group session and was spotted in the gym doing specific work.

Interestingly enough, Moreno’s absence is certain to hit Villarreal hard, mostly because they have anyway struggled for goals this season, having netted just 22 times in 20 outings in the league. And out of those 22 strikes, Moreno is responsible for five.

At the same time, they have conceded 17 goals, meaning that they are letting in 0.85 goals per game while scoring a mere 1.1 on average.

Above all, Villarreal’s recent form has been substandard, to say the very least. The Yellow Submarines have won just one of their last five games across all competitions (D1, L3). These defeats have come against Elche, Rayo Vallecano and Real Madrid.

Meanwhile, Villarreal manager Quique Setien, a former Barcelona boss, does not really have many options if Moreno is certain to miss the Barcelona encounter. This is mostly because Nico Jackson is injured while Arnaut Danjuma left the team in January.

This means the manager is left with Jose Luis Morales and a certain Fer Nino in the attack. But what concerns the manager is the fact that Nino, despite being 22, has not really played much with the senior as he has been part of the subsidiary squad.

All this comes as a huge sigh of relief for Xavi, mostly because the manager is set to have a near-fit squad at his disposal. He does have Sergio Busquets and Ousmane Dembele injured, but there are replacements ready for both of them in the team.