Honestly, there are no other teams in the league to actually compete head-to-head with Real Madrid. Even though Atletico Madrid has been showing good performances recently, I just do not trust them to be consistent enough. Barcelona needed to win every easy match that they had. But they were not able to win those matches. Actually, Barcelona is not performing well, to be honest. When you need to defend the league title, you really need to be consistent. And you need to be more consistent when you know that you do not have too much power in your squad.
I wonder why people think Barcelona's performance this season is bad, cause they're not 1st on the table, well they're the only team in the Laliga that's unbeaten and even Realmadrid and Girona that's currently above them have each lost 1 match so far, even in the UCL competition they're performing very brilliantly and top the group H table currently, so cause they're not toping the league doesn't mean they're not doing fine, atleast they're 3rd on the table with 21points with just 3 points difference between them and Madrid.
The league is still very far before it comes to an end and where they're currently on the table I must say they're doing fine, they just have to be more careful not to drop more points and widen the gap between them and Realmadrid, they still remain strong contenders of the league and would definitely overthrown Girona in their position on the standings.