We cannot afford to lose again, Denis Suarez warns Barcelona

The champions sit six points behind Los Blancos, with four draws and surprise defeats to Alaves and Celta Vigo having handed the advantage to Zinedine Zidane's side.

Suarez does not consider the gap to be insurmountable - especially given that Madrid have four matches left against other sides currently in the top four.

Nevertheless, he accepts that another defeat could spell the end of Barca's hopes, and urged his side to raise their performances after the break for the holidays.

"Madrid always fight until the end - we see that in the way they play," he told Mundo Deportivo. "But it doesn't matter. Okay, they have a six-point lead, but it's not that much and they still have to play some difficult teams.

"Starting from now, we can't lose any more. We want the league and we want to push for it."

Barca meet Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last 16 and are favourites to progress to the quarter-finals, with the Ligue 1 champions having struggled for consistency under Unai Emery this season.

Suarez, however, expects PSG to hit a far better standard when Barca visit Parc des Princes on February 14.

He continued: "I expect a very physical PSG against us. I saw the match against Nice where they played with three defensive midfielders and one central midfielder on the wing.

"I think they'll do that against us. When I was at Sevilla and we played against Barca, that's what we did.

"They're a great team. They signed Emery to try to win the Champions League. Unai is very intelligent and I don't think he'll make things easy for us.

"The PSG that will play against us will not be the same as the one we're seeing now.

"It'll be a totally different team, not only in terms of how they are, but because you can't play against Barca as you do against anyone else, and they'll want to knock us out, that's for sure."