Luis Suarez: 'Goal drought not an issue'

Barcelona forward Luis Suarez has insisted that he was not concerned about his goal drought entering Saturday night's Catalan derby away to Espanyol in La Liga.

Suarez entered the league match off the back of a run of six games without a goal, but the Uruguay international netted a brace in the 3-0 win to send Barcelona back to the top of the table.

The former Liverpool striker has said that while he was "happy" to return to the scoresheet, he is never overly concerned when he does not find the back of the net.

"Of course I'm happy for these two goals for what they mean, but I want to make it clear that I wasn't obsessed at all about not scoring in the last few games," Suarez told reporters.

"That's football. The important thing is to help the team, no matter who scores the goals. The game wasn't easy. Espanyol did very well defensively in their first half, but we played at all times with huge intensity, desire and ambition.

"We took advantage of the opportunity to get ahead on the scoreboard and that, of course, gave us a lot of calmness. From there, we controlled the game very well and were able to kill it off at the end."

Suarez has now scored 26 times in 32 La Liga fixtures for Barcelona during the 2016-17 campaign, in addition to providing 12 assists.