Barcelona could not win this match. But there is no denying that Rayo vallecano played great. I was just surprised by their performance. Despite Barcelona being a strong team, Vallecano players were able to play very well. And due to such a great performance of Vallecano, Barcelona was under a lot of pressure. And in the end , Barcelona had to be happy with 1 point. If lewandowski had been in the starting XI, maybe Barcelona would not have missed easy chances and would have been able to score a few more goals. There are several weaknesses in Barcelona's overall performance that are visible. They need to play better if they want to dominate La Liga.
Lewandowski misses a lot of scoring opportunities so I don't think his presence would have made a difference. It's a shame Rayo converted their chances poorly, Barcelona actually gained 1 point here instead of losing 2.
But what surprises me is that the bookmakers did not react to this loss of points (although Real took their 3) and despite the fact that Barcelona is lagging behind, it is still considered the favorite in the title race with odds of 1.83.
Honestly, sometimes teams need a false-9 not for scoring but just for a build up. So similarly, Barcelona also needed a false-9 badly against Rayo Vallecano. Ray Valancano uses press after touch play in which the opponent can break the false-9 by coming short on instruction. Despite Hansi Flick keeping Lewandowski on the bench and I think that was his big mistake. If Lewandoski was there, he could have helped in offensive build up if not goal. Lewandowski has a better competence of false-9 play, Hansi Flick should have included him in X11.
I think Barcelona lost the victory for two reasons. Number one is defensive rotation which should not have been done in general, an against a defensive pressing team (Ray Valacano) and the second is excluding Lewi from X11.