Except the unfortunate point loss against Vallecano, Barcelona are no different than Real Madrid in terms of strength these days. They are even better in defense compared to Real Madrid as they have conceded only one goal in total. Comparing this Barcelona to Koeman's, there is a huge difference. Thanks to Xavi Barcelona are coming back to their old days. The competition for the title will be really hard of course but finally I can say that Barcelona also have a huge chance for the title.
It is of course only the first weeks of the season but it's not difficult to see some key points at both of Barcelona and Real Madrid already now. After a point these two teams would have a big gap with the others by pulling away from them.
Indeed, in this case it would be very naive to not look at Barcelona now because the current conditions with last season are clearly very different so they deserve to be made one of the candidates again to become champions apart from Real Madrid.
Their current condition really exceeded my expectations actually with a lot of problems at the beginning of the season I didn't really expect much but with their current condition it would be very naive to say they are not champion candidates with this kind of performance.