Barcelona's recent matches have not been good, although they have won three of their four games and drawn one... Barcelona are conceding a lot of goals at the moment, which indicates problems in defence... Of all the La Liga clubs, only Real look very good right now... I think that this season Barcelona will have more problems than last season, when they became champions...
It's still early in the season and there's still a lot of time for the teams to improve, Barcelona currently looks weak in terms of defense but Real Madrid also has problems in the front line, in the last few matches Real Madrid has had quite a hard time scoring goals.
So I think these two top La Liga teams have different problems now, but how these teams can handle them and get out of these problems will be profitable for them to be able to chase the title this season.