Barcelona's whole season now rests on holy trinity of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar

Barcelona’s problem is they are all about three players. And the solution to all of the club's problems is precisely those three players.

It was the same story again on Wednesday night. It was Leo Messi’s pass to Neymar, Neymar’s cross and Luis Suarez’s volley that gave them the lead. Then Neymar won and dispatched the second-half penalty and when the defence contrived to make it interesting by allowing Athletic back into the game, it was Messi scoring the third with a sublime free-kick.

If you are going to have to rely on just three individuals then make it those three. They have now scored 302 goals between them since they first trotted out on a pitch together as a Barcelona forward line back in 2014.

The wonder is that Messi ever misses penalties – as the player who can do everything, often failing to do one of the simpler things in the game remains one of football’s modern mysteries.

That was Messi’s third goal of 2017 and like the first and second goals of the year it had been scored direct from a free-kick. He career tally of 31 is actually behind Cristiano Ronaldo’s but the success ratio is far superior. As Luis Enrique said after the game: “He’s incomparable”.

A Messi set-piece on the edge of the area is like a spot-kick for Barcelona. The crowd react in the same way when one is given. He actually sent the goalkeeper, Gorka Iraizoz, the wrong way.

His wrong-footing of the Barca board over the coming months will do untold damage to the mood at the club. He needs to be signed-up before the end of this season.

Hours before the game Jordi Grau had called for “common sense” and a “cool head” over renewal negotiations and he reminded everyone that Barca had certain financial regulations to abide by in terms of proportion of income spent on salaries.

Asked about Grau’s comments after the game, Luis Enrique seemed unsure of who exactly Grau was – executive director is his job description – and of what he exactly he had said. Then the Barcelona coach told reporters: “I don’t know much about numbers, but I know a lot about football and he was decisive again tonight.” In other words, the cost of not renewing him and allowing him to leave for nothing at the end of next season, is the only cost worth considering.

It’s a strange decision to have renewed almost everyone else before the most important player but the board seem to have taken the view that Barca president Josep Bartomeu will be in a better bargaining position if he can sit down with Messi and his father Jorge and be able to stay: ‘please stay, look all your pals are staying.’

Suarez is chief among those pals. The pair flew back home on the same flight from South America after Christmas. Suarez needed a little more road before his engines really warmed-up in 2017 – he was, by his standards, poor in the first two games of the year but his both-feet-off-the-ground volley marked up 100 goals in 120 games on Wednesday.

That’s an incredible record, especially in view of him having scored only four penalties in that tally. He supplied the wow factor to ‘operation comeback’. It was his century and he had marked it up with a six over the bowler’s head and into the crowd.

Neymar had not scored for over 900 minutes meanwhile. He really looked like a man in the dark tunnel of self-doubt as he shimmied his way up to the penalty spot to take his second half spot-kick. It was the penalty version of the forward-roll throw-in once perfected by Newcastle’s Steven Watson. He danced his way to the ball before stroking it past the keeper – if Fred Astaire took penalties he’d take them like Neymar.

All the problems Barcelona had before they knocked out Athletic on Wednesday night, they still have. They are still too easy to score against; they are still unable to move the ball anywhere near as quickly and as smoothly in midfield as they used to; and they still look limited tactically.

When they are struggling to break an opponent down there is no Pep Guardiola on the sidelines – head nervously in hands – switching to a back two. They can’t even bring on Pedro. They just pray that little bit harder to the gods of that divine front three.

Dare we say it that they only have one plan – but what a plan it is. Messi, Neymar and Suarez – on their brilliance, the remainder of the season rests.