Barcelona players are being pushed to the limit in 2018 LaLiga Santander - FC Barcelona Clocked up a lot of playing time

The Barcelona starters have accumulated an excessive amount of minutes on the field so far in 2018.

Most of them are at the top of the table for minutes played in the calendar year if we add together the games they have played for their club and country.

Six of the first 12 on this list are Blaugrana players, which gives an idea of Ernesto Valverde's disproportionate use of them.

There is another very important fact and it is the age of these six players - Ivan Rakitic, Gerard Pique, Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets, Lionel Messi and Jordi Alba.

All of them are the older side of 30, aside from Alba who is 29, which means that the wear and tear on their bodies is greater because the recovery is more complicated the older you get.

If you look at the other players included in that list of a dozen, you can see that aside from Diego Godin, who is 32 years old, the rest are young - Lucas Hernandez (22), Saul (23), Raphael Varane (25), Koke (26) and Antoine Griezmann (27).

As can be seen, the team to be second most impacted by an excess of minutes is Atletico Madrid.

Since he took over on the bench of Barcelona, Valverde has relied on his same group of starters.

He isn't too keen on making widespread changes.

It happened last season and is repeating itself once more this year.

The same core group almost always take to the field, with very little rest for the players.

Despite the fact that the club spent 126 million euros on reinforcements during the summer, the Blaugrana coach hasn't used them too much.

Within the club, they have asked him to give more chances to the new arrivals because the end of the season is when you need your main men to be fresh.