Atletico Madrid Are in Real Danger of Seeing This La Liga Season Pass Them by

Failing to take your chances is always a recipe for disappointment in football, but when presented with a golden opportunity to haul themselves back into relevance in La Liga this season, Atletico Madrid responded by struggling to get a sight of goal.

On a day when a certain other meeting of Catalonia and Madrid was hogging the headlines, both in the division and across the world, Espanyol’s visit to the Estadio Vicente Calderon was always going to struggle to compete.

It ended goalless, but there were also always going to be storylines.

Before Saturday's contest was a reminder that football isn’t the most important thing in life, as memories of the ex-Atletico player Cleber Santana were shared in the week that the Chapecoense captain so sadly died along with the vast majority of his team-mates and other passengers in a plane crash.

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The Brazilian—an Atletico player between 2007 and 2010, a spell that featured a loan spell away from the club—was part of the squad managed by Quique Sanchez Flores, who suddenly found himself back at a former home on Saturday evening.

Because the clash saw his first return to the Calderon after he left the club in 2011.

The manager who led Atletico to UEFA Europa League glory in 2010—their first European trophy in 48 years—embarked on a kind of world tour thereafter, taking the reins at Al-Ahli in Dubai, Al-Ain in Abu Dhabi, Getafe back in La Liga—but only for about six weeks—and then Watford in the Premier League.

Before leaving in the summer, the Spaniard turned the Hornets into a tough, difficult-to-beat side at times, with their season featuring various peaks and troughs but also never looking like it would end in relegation.

And you can almost transpose that Watford side on to this Espanyol team. Flores’ players were compact and tight at the Calderon, but they were also threatening going forward. Indeed, they had the best and most presentable chances during the first hour of the match, with Atletico’s Jan Oblak twice denying them well.

Perhaps it was the way that Espanyol had set up that suddenly sent a ripple of dissatisfaction around the Calderon. It was audible during a fairly lamentable first-half showing from Atletico, and it only grew louder as the match wore on.

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This is a club in real danger of seeing this season pass them by, with results like Saturday's only adding fuel to that particularly dangerous fire.

With the three clubs above them in the table all dropping points on Saturday, this was a glorious chance for Diego Simeone and his team to do something and to make a statement. But it looked more like they were bothered about Espanyol’s setup than taking the game to their opponents.

Flores has drilled a good, organised side that with this latest clean sheet has kept five in a row in La Liga. That's not an inconsiderable feat.

What's more, this one was achieved with a minimum of fuss.

There were a couple of occasions in the second half—as Antoine Griezmann finally burst into life—that suggested Flores’ side might be about to be breached, but the lack of creativity and imagination from Atletico was a reminder of what plenty have always claimed is the big problem with Simeone’s side. That failure to put a foot on the ball and carve open the opposition when the going is tough has so often deserted them, and it did so again here.

As for the manager, the fact he was so willing to focus on the defensive efforts of his opponents after the game should not detract from the failures of his own side.

Speaking at his post-match press conference, Simeone said:

"

I think that the match was intense, nice—regarding the defensive work of Espanyol, which was almost perfect—and we were playing in different ways to break their strong defensive block.

The tie is fair, with what was seen in the match.

I leave today feeling that the team gave its all, they tried to score in every possible way, forced the rival to defend itself in a brilliant way, and when a team defends itself well, you have to congratulate them.

We have won many games like the one Espanyol played today. They have played a good match defensively.

"

That they did, but it is Atletico’s job—and indeed Simeone’s—to find ways past that defence. If they were employing tactics that his team has used on plenty of occasions, then is it not even more damning that Atletico failed to find a way past the Catalans?

Perhaps this is harsh, but as Simeone heaps praise on Atletico, he needs to be looking closer to home.

All three of his substitutions seemed a little bit forced on Saturday evening, with Kevin Gameiro's arrival with just seven minutes from time surely the most baffling.

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With his team hunting and pressing for a goal, the fact he didn’t turn to his big summer attacking signing a lot earlier should perhaps indicate that all is not well in the Atletico camp, with suggestions that Simeone has somehow lost his desire now that the impressive spell earlier in the season is over bound to be thrown around.

Perhaps solace will be found in the Champions League, a tournament that the Argentinian must be craving after his two cruel final defeats in the past three years.

That competition continues with a dead-rubber clash at Bayern Munich on Tuesday, and the nature of that game doesn’t quite hint at the glorious and sweeping victory that Simeone and his team seem as though they need to kick things on again.

But as this league season threatens to pass them by, maybe it is there that they can kick on and get going again.

Because the opportunities for success are fading fast.