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| PROBABLE LINEUPS |
BARCELONA  Valdes Alves, Puyol, Mascherano, Abidal Xavi, Busquets, Thiago Pedro, Messi, Villa | VIKTORIA PLZEN  Cech Limbersky, Bystron, Cisovsky, Rajtoral Horvath, Jiracek, Fillo, Kolar, Petrzela Bakos |
Barcelona will be without Cesc Fabregas and Alexis Sanchez, who are both unavailable with hamstring injuries, although the former is almost back to full fitness.
Ibrahim Afellay is still in rehabilitation after undergoing knee surgery. Gerard Pique suffered a hamstring strain in the 3-0 win over Racing Santander at the weekend and is set to miss two weeks of action.
Pep Guardiola's men will be big favourites for this match, and with a tricky game against Sevilla coming up at the weekend, the Barca coach may opt to give Thiago a run in midfield in place of Andres Iniesta, who has only recently returned from injury.
Viktoria Plzen have injuries to first-team squad members going into the match. Roman Pavlik has not featured since July 27 due to a knee injury, and Vaclav Pilar suffered a concussion in Czech Republic's 4-1 win over Lithuania last week, so is a doubt for the match at Camp Nou.
| DID YOU KNOW? |
- The last time an opponent from the Czech Republic came to Camp Nou, Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola was on the scoresheet, in a 5-0 victory over Sparta Prague.
- Barcelona have faced teams from the Czech Republic 10 times, with a record of six wins, a draw, and three losses.
- Pep Guardiola's side are unbeaten at home in Europe in 11 games, with the last loss coming at the hands of Rubin Kazan, who pulled off a shock 2-1 victory.
- This is the first match in history between the two sides. Viktoria Plzen have never faced Spanish opposition.
- The Czech outfit have only played two European away matches before in this campaign, and lost both, shipping nine goals in the process.
- Viktoria Plzen have the joint highest yellow card count in the competition so far, collecting six cautions.
Prediction
Barcelona have learned and improved a great deal since their surprise Champions League loss to Rubin Kazan at Camp Nou in 2009 so it is unlikely that a shock will be on the cards. Viktoria Plzen done well against AC Milan in their previous European match and made a good account of themselves, but against a Barca team at the top of their game, you cant see anything but a dominant home win with the Czech side shipping a few goals.
Editor's Prediction
Barcelona 4-0 FC Viktoria Plzeň 
