Why Barcelona's 8-0 Win over Deportivo Was a Perfect Result at a Perfect Time

Eight goals. Eight! How many times have you seen your team do that? Try doing it for your local side on a Sunday morning or against a mate at FIFA. It’s not that easy and is incredibly rare.

And it is even more special to do it away from home and at a time when you are being scrutinised like never before.

In the bars and restaurants around the Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday night, Real Madrid fans would have gathered ahead of their team’s match against Villarreal and watched on, hoping Deportivo La Coruna would do them a favour and that Barcelona would drop even more points in what has become a remarkable Primera Division title race.

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Then, on 11 minutes, Luis Suarez scored.

On 24 minutes, he scored again.

In the second half, Barca scored six more goals. By the time Suarez teed up Neymar for the eighth, those Madrid supporters would have already long settled into their seats ahead of their club's match, knowing they were guaranteed to end the evening behind their hated rivals in the table.

In the event, they won 3-0, with Atletico Madrid’s obdurate 1-0 success at Athletic Bilbao, courtesy of a Fernando Torres strike, ensuring all three title contenders ended the night as they started it: Barca ahead of Atletico on a head-to-head record with both ahead of Real by a point.

And it is important to remember that for all the talk of collapses and of a ghostly Carlos Queiroz haunting their title challenge, such as by Unibet’s Dermot Corrigan, Barca do still have that advantage.

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The emphatic nature of their 8-0 win at the Riazor was a perfect reminder that regardless of the discussions over their style of football, of their players' tiredness, of key players going missing or of the myriad “what’s gone wrong with Barcelona?” articles in recent weeks, they can simply blow you away when everything clicks.

This wasn’t about playing pretty football, but instead it was about a sheer will to score goals. Goal after goal after goal after goal after goal after goal after goal after goal.

If the performance was a player, it would be Suarez, who became the first man this century to score four times and assist three in La Liga, per Opta (via Goal).

In times of trouble, it is always worth reducing football to its simplest form and its simplest objective: get the ball and put it in the back of the other team’s net.

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When Suarez arrived in Catalonia in 2014, he seemed to remind Barcelona of that.

Building on the work of Neymar the previous season, Suarez gave this remarkable side a razor-sharp edge. Suddenly, possession wasn’t the be all and end all for them. Scoring goals was.

Suarez has 74 goals in 91 Barcelona appearances, but if anything, you expect that to be even more. Following a brief period of adjustment to his new team, he has simply not stopped scoring. There surely hasn’t been a better forward on the planet over the past 12 months.

And it is him Luis Enrique will trust to lead his line for these closing matches of the season, safe in the knowledge Barca are four wins away from the title whatever their rivals do.

Those fixtures? Sporting Gijon at home, Real Betis away, Espanyol at home, Granada away. Those teams are 17th, 10th, 15th and 18th respectively in the Primera Division table.

At any other time of the season, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid over such fixtures. If you hadn’t caught up with the result, you’d simply presume Barcelona had won and go about your business.

The fact they come at the end of a title race Barca looked to have won but have opened up through their own making adds pressure, of course, but they should still win all four of their remaining league matches.

Maybe they won’t all be 8-0, but Wednesday's hammering of Deportivo was the perfect reminder of what Barca are capable of.

And there’s nothing Atletico or Real can do about that.