BARCELONA, JAN 24: Barcelona must harness the euphoria of their thrilling Champions League victory at Benfica to halt a miserable run of La Liga form against an improving Valencia side on Sunday.
The Catalan giants have just one victory in their last eight league games and have dropped seven points behind champions and current leaders Real Madrid.
Valencia visit the Olympic stadium on the back of an impressive 1-0 home win against Real Sociedad last weekend, with the team already looking stronger under new coach Carlos Corberan.
The former West Bromwich Albion coach was appointed on Christmas day, and his side came close to taking points off Madrid in a narrow 2-1 defeat in his first outing.
Los Che have also won two cup games in January to reach the quarter-finals, where they will also face Barcelona.
Their win over Real Sociedad helped them climb off the bottom of the table to 19th, four points from safety.
Corberan and Co face a Barcelona side that has scored five goals in three of their last four matches, but their only league game in that period finished in a frustrating 1-1 draw at Getafe last Saturday.
Valencia will take note of how the Madrid minnows' low block defence caused Hansi Flick's side a great deal of difficulty to break down and will likely follow suit.
Flick said his team also had to work on their defensive mistakes against Benfica ahead of the Valencia clash.
"It's important we speak about this, because the next opponents will look at this match and we have to make it better, and we will do that," said the German coach.
"We will train on this, if it's possible, or we can (discuss it) in the meeting, we can do some technical things.
"We analyse everything and we'll show (the players) what we have to do better."
La Liga's top goalscorer Robert Lewandowski netted twice in midweek from the penalty spot but has only produced one goal in his last five league matches. —AFP
