There has been little to separate the two teams in recent meetings, with Rayo Vallecano coming away as the happier side in each of the last three encounters, and they will be confident of causing another upset on Wednesday in front of their home supporters.
However, with champions-elect Barca keen to get the job done at the summit, we expect Xavi's men to edge a closely-fought contest in the Spanish capital.
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Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Barcelona win with a probability of 60.46%. A draw had a probability of 22.2% and a win for Rayo Vallecano had a probability of 17.31%.
The most likely scoreline for a Barcelona win was 0-1 with a probability of 12.02%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 0-2 (11.17%) and 1-2 (9.83%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (10.57%), while for a Rayo Vallecano win it was 1-0 (5.69%). The actual scoreline of 2-1 was predicted with a 4.6% likelihood.
0.1) 
-0.18) 
