The danger of an essentially two-horse race league is that headlines can get a tad predictable. Couple that with the partisan nature of the Spanish press and you can almost predict the articles before they are written.

That was the case when F.C. Barça opened up the year with a draw against Villareal at home -their first dropped points at Camp Nou this season- and a loss in the Copa del Rey against Sevilla. Sport and El Mundo Deportivo would go with the "it's just a blip" quotes from Pep Guardiola, as would Marca and A.S; the latter two publications would, of course, run with the same quotes but surrounded by disbelieving inverted commas.

The man who said it best and really wrote the definitive narrative, then, was Leo Messi, who came back to La Liga action to score a hat-trick against Tenerife in a 5-0 thrashing on Sunday evening. Assisted for each of his three goals by Bojan Kríkic in a strikeforce adjusted due to Zlatan Ibrahimovic's suspension, Messi made a mockery of the Canary Islanders and of those who said that Barça were on the decline.

The return leg of the Copa del Rey takes place on Wednesday evening, and Barcelona will only be missing Keita from their ranks. Iniesta played well over the weekend before being brought off, leaving an abundance of options for the match in Seville. Their opponents lost at Racing Santander the previous day and have dropped out of the Champions League spots.

Messi is now the league's top scorer with twelve goals -level with David Villa. Sometimes the headlines right themselves.