La Liga round-up: Dembele starting to find his feet at Barcelona

Barcelona are now two points clear of Real Madrid at the top of La Liga after watching their closest rivals drop points against Athletic Club this weekend. The reigning Spanish champions suffered a scare themselves, going 1-0 down away to Real Sociedad before rescuing all three points.

Ernesto Valverde’s side will host Girona next weekend and their local rivals will be full of confidence after moving up to third in the table on Monday. A 3-2 win over Celta Vigo means Girona have now taken seven points from their opening four matches. Cristhian Stuani has been a revelation for Girona since moving to the club last year and came out on top in the battle of the Uruguayan strikers against his opposite number Maxi Gomez.

Stuani has now scored three goals in his last two appearances for Girona after netting a brace against Celta, including what turned out to be winner, on Monday night. The 31-year-old opened the scoring with a neat header, meaning he has now scored at least two more headers than any other La Liga player since the start of last season (11).

The Uruguayan hit the target with all three of his efforts on goal, albeit profiting from a goalkeeper error for his second, to finish gameweek four in La Liga as the highest WhoScored rated player (9.11). Following closely behind Stuani as the second highest WhoScored rated player is Girona team-mate Alex Granell (8.65), who provided the assist for their second goal against Celta, converted by Pedro Alcala.

Granell was incredibly influential from central midfield, creating two more goalscoring chances on top of his assist and attempting three shots on goal. Not only that, but the 30-year-old incredibly completed nine tackles. In fact, only Atletico Madrid midfielder Saul Niguez (10) has completed more in a La Liga game this season. Granell added four interceptions to that feat as well.

Rounding off the top three highest WhoScored rated players in La Liga this weekend is Barcelona forward Ousmane Dembele (8.39). The 2018 World Cup winner endured a difficult maiden campaign at Camp Nou but finally looks to be fulfilling his promise this time around. Dembele scored the winner for Barcelona, as Valverde’s side came from 1-0 down to beat Real Sociedad 2-1 on Saturday afternoon. 

Dembele created three goalscoring chances, completed three dribbles and was fouled twice during his 76-minute performance against La Real. Not only that, but only Gerard Pique (4) completed more tackles than the France international (3) of all Barcelona players.

While Barcelona celebrated three points, it was a miserable afternoon for Real Sociedad goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli, who finished the weekend as the lowest WhoScored rated player (4.61), The Argentina international committed errors for each of Barcelona’s goals, undoing all of his side’s good work to get ahead in the match. The 26-year-old did make four saves, but that means little after gifting Barcelona three points.