Barcelona head to the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan this weekend knowing that three points against Sevilla will leave them on the brink of a seventh La Liga title in 10 years.

Key to the Catalan giants' success once again this term has been the goalscoring form of Lionel Messi, who has racked up 25 goals to lead the scoring charts.

Barca may have to make do without their star performer on Saturday evening, as the five-time Ballon d'Or winner is carrying a knock that ruled him out of Argentina's two friendlies during the international break, though manager Ernesto Valverde remains confident of having him available for selection.

With that in mind, Sports Mole takes a closer look at Messi's past record against this weekend's opponents.

As is now expected for a player of his quality, Messi boasts a return of nearly a goal a game against Sevilla, made all the more impressive when considering that he has played 31 times against the Andalusian outfit.

Twenty-two of those encounters have come in La Liga and, despite firing a blank in this term's reverse meeting, the superstar forward has still managed 14 goals in his last 11.

In fact, the Argentina international's failure to score at Camp Nou in early November ended a run of five successive games in which he has netted against Los Rojiblancos in the Spanish top flight.

Messi famously scored a hat-trick in the second leg of the 2010-11 Supercopa as his side successfully overturned a two-goal deficit, and he has also bagged a treble in the league - November 2014's clash in Catalonia, which made him La Liga's outright leading goalscorer of all time.

Take the 13 assists into account, too, and it is fair to say that Sevilla have grown sick of coming up against a Messi-inspired Barcelona over the past 13 years.