The season has just started. There is still a long journey ahead. The teams will play 31 more matches. So the 2-point gap is not a big gap. Madrid is a strong team. But it is unlikely that they will win all the matches consecutively. Madrid is likely to lose points in the upcoming matches as well. However, if Barcelona wants to win the title, their performance definitely needs to improve. With such irregular performance, Barcelona will not be able to maintain the top spot in the table. We did not see the expected good performance from Barcelona in the match against Espanyol either.
The tight competition among several teams in the standings is something we will commonly encounter at the beginning of the season. We will see some teams starting to become consistent and inconsistent by mid-season. Sometimes, we even see at the end of the season, teams that were initially consistent with good results eventually experience a decline in performance.
Madrid is indeed preparing for this season. They do not want to lose to Barcelona again. As for Barcelona, they need to improve their performance, not just in the defense line, but coordination in the attacking line, and finishing is also important. Last season, they performed better.