Luis Enrique’s honeymoon period as the Barcelona manager appears to be definitely over after his team suffered a 3-1 defeat against Real Madrid in the latest El Clasico. The defeat was more magnified by the fact that Barcelona did not provide a great response to going down against one of the fiercest rivals. Barcelona came into the encounter after not having conceded a single goal in the league up until now, but they allowed their opposition to score 3 past them on a night when it could have gone even worse. Madrid had several counter-attacks and could have easily scored five past on another night with some better finishing.

Still, it is not all doom and gloom for Barcelona since they still lead the table albeit with just one point over Madrid. They are also just two points above current champions Atletico Madrid. Pressure is certainly on Enrique at the moment, but he has downplayed speculation of poor form after this latest defeat. One of the reasons for a number of questions being thrown at Enrique is the concerning form of Barcelona especially against the big teams. They had lost 3-2 to Paris St Germain in the Champions League group stages only a few weeks ago.

Barcelona next play at home to Celta de Vigo looking to getting back to winning ways. “I would have settled for that defeat at the start of the season if we won La Liga, and I would at the end. We’d be delighted. I’d accept losing to anyone if we won La Liga. I’m aware that to win we need to play well. And that would mean that the fans enjoy themselves. At the end of the day, we are joint leaders after nine games and for me it’s much more important to be top of La Liga than to have beaten Real Madrid,” said Enrique.

Mark Hughes has praised his counterpart at Southampton, Ronald Koeman, by saying that he has done a stellar job in his short time at the club. Koeman was appointed as the successor for Pochettino, who decided to join Tottenham in the summer. The summer transfer window was followed by a lot of talk around the club being unable to even fighter relegation battle. Such was the astronomical sale of the important first-team players to the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool. More than £ 100 million was raised due to the departure of names like Luke Shaw and Adam Lallana.

Koeman, though, made Southampton become involved in the transfer window in terms of purchases during the end of the window. The new arrivals coupled with a success of loan stars have made Southampton a force in the Premier League this season. Going into the weekend’s match against Stoke City, Southampton are in the position where they could potentially go second in the table. Hughes says that this is a major achievement from a manager with limited resources at his disposal. Once upon a time, the former Chelsea striker was also famed for overachieving on a limited budget at Blackburn Rovers.

“When it happens in such a short space of time it’s difficult because they lost their manager and they lost two or three key players who had been exceptional for them the year previously. There was perhaps a fear if they didn’t get the right players in, and the right manager, then there could be a difficulty. But in fairness they have not had the issue of being unable to go into the market and spend good money. They’ve had a decent amount of money to work with that has enabled them to get good quality into the building,” said Hughes.