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.
Even though Barcelona is unbeaten so far, that also doesn't mean Barcelona has a guarantee of the La Liga title this season. Because after all, the evidence is that even though Barcelona has not been defeated so far, but why, why Barcelona not at the top in the standings. Because usually, when a team manages to go undefeated, then of course that team is at the top of the standings, but for Barcelona at this moment, Barcelona current position is even below Girona. Therefore, at least there is no definite guarantee for Barcelona to win the La Liga title this season, because the league is still long, of course Real Madrid also has a big chance of maintaining its top position throughout this season.