BARCELONA THREW AWAY 2-0 LEAD

Villarreal 2-2 Barcelona: Luis Enrique's men had a two-goal lead at half-time but the home side battled back to earn a point

• Barcelona extend their lead at the top of La Liga to nine points 
• Rakitic opened the scoring after 20 minutes and Neymar made it 2-0
• The second goal was a penalty after a strange decision by the referee -Villarreal keeper Asenjo won the ball cleanly but was penalised
• The home side battled back in the second half through Bakambu and a Mathieu own goal

Villarreal fans sang: ‘hands up this is a robbery’ as a disastrous performance from referee Jose Maria Sanchez played its part in denying them victory over Barcelona.

Barça took an early lead through Ivan Rakitic but then whistler Sanchez took over getting almost all of his big decisions wrong in an awful first 45 minutes in which he should have sent off Gerard Pique, and mistakenly awarded Neymar a penalty.

‘It was not a penalty,’ said Villarreal keeper Sergio Asenjo after the game. ‘The linesman is 15 metres away and he should have seen that. But this team never gives and everyone saw that. We said to each other at half time that we were going to start the second half as if it was still 0-0 and we did that. Many teams would have thrown in the towel.’

Referee Sanchez had shown 38 yellow cards and two reds in his last four games before this one and he booked Pique early for a foul on Samu Castillejo. But he then failed to spot handball from the same player when he went to ground tackling Denis Suarez.

The Barcelona loanee broke clear and had he got past Pique, Villarreal had three players honing in on Claudio Bravo’s goal. The defender used both hands to stop the ball but the referee failed to spot the infringement.

Had Pique been sent off he would have been ruled out of the visit of Real Madrid in two weeks' time so fans of Barça’s eternal rivals were also furious with the decision. But it was the Villarreal supporters who were really up in arms and they soon had even more to be upset about.