Why Barcelona is having an uncharacteristically difficult season

On the surface, all is well. Barcelona has booked its usual passage into the round of 16 of the Champions League, sits pretty in the quarterfinals of the Copa del Rey after a first-leg win and trails Real Madrid by just two points in La Liga.

Look closer, however, and things are merely fine. Because Barca faces a talented Paris Saint-Germain in Europe – an unusually tough task at this stage, since the four times they’ve faced off in the last three years, they’ve tied twice and won once apiece. And in the league, Real could increase the lead to five points if the makeup game with hapless Valencia is won.

And then there’s the Copa del Rey, in which Barcelona struggled to overcome Athletic Bilbao in the round of 16 and required a penalty to edge the first leg of the quarterfinals against Real Sociedad 1-0 on Thursday. That’s not necessarily something to sniff at, since Barca hadn’t won at the Anoeta in just a few months shy of a decade. But the performance was all too typical of Luis Enrique’s Cules in recent months: dominating, but ponderous in the final third, and with scoring chances in short supply.

By Barca’s own towering standards, it has been an underwhelming season. In September and early October, the club had a run in the league where it lost twice and tied once in the span of just five games. Of its last seven league games, Barcelona has won just three, tying all the others. And the Copa del Rey has been a slog, with the first leg in the round of 32 against third-tier Hercules ending in a 1-1 tie, before they were crushed 7-0. The round of 16 began with a loss to Athletic.

The club has played 29 games so far this year. In the first 15, from Aug. 20 through Nov. 6, it won 11, tied one and lost three with a 46-17 scoring record for a +29 goal difference. In the second 14, from Nov. 19 through Jan. 19, Barca has won nine, tied four and lost one with 34 goals scored and eight conceded, for a +26 ledger.

Remarkably though, in those last seven league games, Barca scored 12 of its 15 goals in just three matches. In the other four, all the ties, it got just three — in one scoreless and three 1-1 draws.

Which is to say that its offense fires hot and cold.

Neymar and Luis Suarez – and on some days even the indefatigable Lionel Messi – have often looked weary, in spite of just coming off the winter break. All three were active in two Copa Americas and a World Cup over the last three summers. Neymar and Suarez also played in the 2013 Confederations Cup.

And while over this summer, the club spent many millions reinforcing a thin squad, the help in the attacking half has been slow in coming. Barca bought two defenders – Lucas Digne and Samuel Umtiti – who have proved assets. But midfielder Andre Gomes and striker Paco Alcacer, both poached from Valencia for a cumulative fee that might wind up rising to $92 million, have been disappointing. Alcacer has exactly one goal – scored in that blowout of Hercules in the second leg, no less. Gomes has all of one assist.

Turkish winger Arda Turan has come good after a difficult first season, but Luis Enrique doesn’t seem to trust him to rotate evenly with any of the other forwards. He has started just nine times in the league and once in the Champions League.

Barca remains perilously short on reliable talent up front, meaning that the regulars are overworked, and that even playmaker Andres Iniesta has been run somewhat ragged in the absence of an alternative. Because if Gomes isn’t it, neither are the forgettable Sandro, the oft-injured Rafinha or Ivan Rakitic, who seems to have fallen out with Luis Enrique.

While the team has a very healthy 80 goals in 29 matches (2.75/game), opposite 25 conceded (0.86/game), they tend to come in goal explosions that can’t be relied upon to arrive in every single match. And on the days when they don’t, Barca regresses below its attacking mean.

It’s this inconsistency that has been costly this year. And while plenty of time to rectify things remains, the most urgent order of business is to find goals somewhere on the difficult days. Predictably, Messi and Suarez lead the team with 27 and 18 goals, respectively. But after Arda, Neymar and Rafinha, with 12, 8 and 6 goals, nobody on the team has more than three.

Barca has a lack of scoring threats outside of its vaunted MSN. That has certainly been true in other years as well. But when Neymar is having a down year – he’s on pace to score about half the goals he got in each of the last two seasons – and even Suarez has struggled with his form lately, the result is sort of predictable.

Namely, lots of low-scoring ties and a difficult year on the whole.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.