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First Division - Day 4

Barcelona 1 - Sporting Gijón 0

Barcelona: Víctor Valdés; Dani Alves, Gabi Milito, Puyol (Piqué 46'), Maxwell; Xavi, Sergio Busquets, Keita (Pedro 46'); Iniesta, Bojan (Mascherano 70'), David Villa. 4-3-3.
Sporting: Cuéllar; Sastre, Iván Hernández, Botía, José Angel; Luis Morán, Rivera (Sergio Alvarez 85'), Matabuena (Diego Castro 57'), Lora; Bilic (Miguel De las Cuevas 67'), Barral. 4-4-2.

Goals:
1-0. 49. Villa. Ran on to Dani Alves through ball and beat Cuéllar from wide angle.

Yellow cards: Rivera 04', Cuéllar 39', Matabuena 43', Bilic 45', Botía 51', Milito 77', Piqué 89'.

It looks as if Barcelona have a hard season ahead of them. After losing their opening game at home, they were only able to beat a much changed Sporting Gijón 1-0 on Wednesday night, a far cry from their successes from last year. Guardiola still put out a strong side despite missing the injured Messi, but apart from a couple of efforts by Villa and Iniesta which Cuéllar kept out, they were unable to break through a heavily manned defence. Five minutes after the restart though Villa picked up a Dani Alves pass to fired a shot past the keeper, Barça's first league goal in the Nou Camp coming after 140 minutes of football. That should have opened things up, but Sporting resisted to the end, and although Villa went close a couple of times against his old side, the result was in doubt until the final whistle.