Barca cruise past Elche 4-0

Robert Lewandowski struck twice as Barcelona moved 15 points clear at the top of La Liga with a comfortable 4-0 win at Elche on Saturday.

Barca’s Polish forward Lewandowski has endured a small dip in form recently but was back to his lethal best to continue the Catalans’ procession towards their first title since 2019.

Ansu Fati also scored for the first time since October in the league and Ferran Torres rounded out the comfortable win, as Xavi was able to start some reserve players ahead of Wednesday’s Copa del Rey semi-final clash with Real Madrid.

Elche, playing under new coach Sebastian Beccacece for the first time, are bottom of the table and never seemed likely to trouble the runaway league leaders. Champions Madrid, second, host Real Valladolid on Sunday. Barca coach Xavi took the chance to experiment by deploying Garcia in Sergio Busquets’ usual pivot role, and made several other changes to his usual side.

Torres and Fati started on the flanks, the latter having made headlines this week after his father complained about the Barca number 10’s lack of minutes.

“(Goals) always give confidence to the forwards, today it went perfectly,” Xavi told Movistar. “Two goals for Robert, one for Ferran, one for Ansu, and Ansu’s work -- he ended up exhausted, that’s the truth.”