Villarreal haven't beaten Barca at La Ceramica since 2007.
But Marcelino says: "We are playing against the best team in the competition at the moment, because the results, the game and their numbers say so. But we are also doing well, and we are playing at our stadium, which will be full and with great expectations.
"These are the games that all professionals like to play. We respect a Barcelona team that is in great form, with great potential as a winning and attractive team. We are happy with what we are doing, although we know that we have room for improvement. We would all have signed up to having these points after playing three games away from home and after receiving Atlético de Madrid."
On Barca's Champions League defeat at Monaco, Marcelino also said: "The objective is to win, we don't want to pick at any wounds. They're coming off a loss because in football sometimes unexpected situations happen. Nobody wants to be left with one less player in the first few minutes, but they still competed at a high level.
"But one isolated game isn't an indicator of how that team works. For me it's how they've been playing. And they're doing it at a great pace, with a lot of speed, with high-level players who look for spaces. A more vertical team than we were used to, that gene they boasted about.
"They've kept it, but they've incorporated another series of characteristics into the game that make them more dangerous. They've scored more than half of their goals with less than five passes. I should congratulate them because they're a super attractive team."