Pedri: 9 games Barcelona starlet will miss due to injury

Barcelona’s prodigious midfielder Pedri Gonzales is set for another lengthy spell out injured, and the 20-year-old could miss up to nine games for the Blaugrana as their season kicks off.

Pedri is expected to be out for up to six weeks after suffering a muscle problem in his right thigh and will be sorely missed by the Blaugrana as they fully get into the swing of the 2023/24 season.

Pedri has been a crucial player for Barcelona since breaking into the first team as a teenager in the 2020/21 season, and the Blaugrana have struggled in his absence in the last year and will have to do without him for at least the next nine fixtures as he recovers from the latest in a worrying number of muscular injuries.

During his spell on the sidelines, Pedri will miss La Liga games against Villarreal (A), Osasuna (A), Real Betis (H), Celta Vigo (H), Real Mallorca (A), Sevilla (H) and Granada (A), while also missing the first two games of Barcelona’s 2023/24 UEFA Champions League campaign.

Barcelona’s fortunes have dropped considerably when their creative hub has missed games due to injury recently, and the Blaugrana’s win percentage since the 2021/22 season registers as 82.5% in games that Pedri plays and 44.7% in matches that the midfielder has missed.

Such a monumental drop in results points to the 20-year-old’s importance to the team, and it is left to be seen how Barcelona cope in his absence this time around.

Barcelona have beefed up their midfield this summer with the signings of Oriol Romeu and Ilkay Gundogan, but both are a different profile to Pedri and are unlikely to be used as like-for-like replacements.