Barcelona continued their fine form by obliterating Sevilla, with an impressive first half display that included two goals from Lionel Messi and one from Luis Suarez.


The visitors could sense trouble from the off, with Barcelona dominating the early exchanges at Camp Nou. Inside the first three minutes Andres Iniesta played in Luis Suarez, who was able to hold the ball up for Messi to calmly finesse a shot into the top corner. With the keeper beaten it was the crossbar that saved Sergio Rico from picking the ball out the back of his net.

Sevilla were only able to muster up a handful of chances with Steven N'Zonzi coming extremely close to breaking the deadlock. The former Blackburn Rovers man managed to collect the ball from a flick on and evade the dumbfounded Javier Mascherano, but only managed to squeeze off a weak shot off which bounced off Marc-Andre ter Stegen's knee for a corner.


It was only a few minutes later that the home side were celebrating, when Messi zipped forward down the right and managed to twinkle toe into the box to play a right footed cross into the danger area. 


After some unconvincing Sevilla defending, Suarez managed to pull of an exquisite acrobatic overhead goal with Rico rooted to the ground.

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Four minutes later the Catalan club found themselves on the counter attack with Ivan Rakitic galloping down the middle. Rakitic fed Neymar, who cut the ball back into the area. Suarez was on hand to feed the ball back and teammate Messi was found the net through a packed area of players.


Messi extended Barcelona's lead further with half an hour gone, when a poor headed clearance from Sevilla defender Nico Pareja fell to the Argentinian who connected sweetly to score a thunderous strike.

Sevilla addressed their problems with a double substitution at half time, with Matias Kranevitter and Pablo Sarabia coming on, while the completely anonymous Samir Nasri exited. 


The away side were able to see more of the ball with Barcelona seemingly okay with letting them keep hold of it not making any memorable chances in the second half.


Sarabia had the Sevilla fans nearly up on their feet for a consolation goal, as his stinging shot was parried away by Ter Stegen.

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It was clear that Sevilla manager Jorge Sampaoli asked for more aggression from his players. However it drew only fouls and not enough work on the ball with Vitolo seeing his second yellow card of the game in the 91st minute. 


The red card summed up Sevilla's game with what was a disheartening display from the away side, who will now be looking over their shoulders at fifth placed Villarreal after failing to win any of their last six games in all competitions.


Rumours suggested Sampaoli was on the cards to replace Luis Enrique at the end of the season and with this being considered as an audition then it's safe to say he could be at the bottom of the wanted list.