Despite the mass of negative press that has surrounded Barcelona over the past two to three seasons and particularly right now in the wake of the Casa Negreira referee payments scandal, they have been having a great time on the pitch.

The Blaugrana are sitting very pretty at the top of La Liga with a 12-point lead over current champions Real Madrid and have the lead in the Copa del Rey semi-final tie between the two sides, meaning they are well set to win two trophies this season.

The European campaign may have not gone to plan after dropping out of the Champions League and then being booted out of the Europa League by Manchester United, but Xavi Hernandez is certainly doing a really good job on the pitch with a squad that still needs a lot of work.

While the La Liga title will be Xavi's main aim, he could be about to break a pretty special record with his Barcelona side.

As things stand, the current Barcelona side is set to break the record for the fewest goals conceded per game across a league campaign.

Barcelona have only conceded nine times in their 26 La Liga games so far which means they are averaging 0.346 goals conceded per game. That puts them at the top of the leaderboard for the best defensive records ever in the top five leagues in Europe.

They are currently beating the record that was set by Cagliari back in the 1969/70 season. In the 30 Serie A games that season, they only conceded 11 goals. Barcelona have still got 12 games left to play this season but on current trajectory, even if they concede more goals than that Cagliari side, they could beat the record.

If they concede four more goals, they would still beat the record and end with a goals conceded per game rate of 0.342, better than Cagliari's 0.367.