La Liga Winners and Losers from Week 17: Real Finally Lose, Barca Miss Chance
La Liga is back for 2015, with the opening gameweek providing us with plenty of surprising results, noteworthy moments and top performances.
Nothing is decided in January in terms of trophies or relegation, but as teams approach the midway point of the fixture list, they know the time to start getting the points that will see them achieve their objectives is now.
Unfortunately, that can't happen for all 20 clubs at once, so here are our big winners and losers from the latest round of games.
Winners: Atletico Madrid in the Title Race
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The big winner of the first gameweek of 2015 was undoubtedly Atletico Madrid.
The title race has already been looking like a three-horse race, but reigning champions Atletico were a few points behind Barcelona and Real Madrid; they played first on Saturday, though, so they had a chance to regain ground. And that they did—with a 3-1 win at home to Levante, in which Antoine Griezmann continued his scoring run with a brace.
The celebrations from the three points continued into Sunday, as both their title rivals suffered defeat to leave the top three separated by just one point.
Oh, and they welcomed home an old hero in Fernando Torres.
Losers: Luis Enrique and Barcelona
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Barcelona played last out of that troika of sides and would have known perfectly well by kick-off that a win at Real Sociedad would have put them top of the table—so it was a big surprise when Luis Enrique's teamsheet showed neither Lionel Messi nor Neymar in the starting XI.
Resting players is all well and good, necessary even, but there has to be a time and a place, and this opportunity to go top simply wasn't it.
How much can Messi have benefited from not playing that extra 45 minutes? Whatever the amount, it was certainly outweighed by the damage done by Barcelona's 1-0 reversal.
Winners: Deportivo La Coruna Get Points on the Board
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Down at the other end of the table, the relegation fight looks like being between Cordoba, Elche and one other side out of four or five.
Deportivo La Coruna, as a newly promoted team, have naturally struggled to get to grips with the top flight and taken some time to find rhythm and wins, but they started 2015 in the best way possible with a 1-0 home win over Athletic Bilbao.
Ivan Cavaleiro's goal gave Depor their second win in three and a three-point buffer to the drop zone. Ahead of a crunch relegation battle with Levante, these points were extremely important.
Losers: Celta Vigo's Incredibly Bad Run Continues
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Celta Vigo, what is going on?
Eduardo Berizzo's team started the season playing good, offensive football, winning games and suggesting they had enough to challenge for at least a Europa League spot this term. Since beating Barcelona at Camp Nou on November 1, though, they have gone seven league games without a win, suffering six defeats in a row and not scoring a single goal in that time.
A 1-0 loss to Sevilla continued that run, and Celta are now down to ninth.
Winners: Valencia in the Top-Four Chase
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The title race has three sides in it, and the fight for the top four is even more fascinating, with Valencia, Villarreal, Sevilla and Malaga all doing battle with each other.
Los Che's win over Real Madrid was certainly the biggest three points any of them could hope to have taken this weekend, but Valencia also announced the signing of Enzo Perez and showed more attacking aggression in the game than they had done in some matches this term.
Coupled with Nuno's recent tactical change to a 3-5-2 yielding good results, it's all looking very promising indeed for Valencia at present.
Losers: Villarreal and Malaga, in the Same Race
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Valencia won, Sevilla won, but the other two sides in that race for fourth lost ground this time around, and both will feel the points dropped were completely avoidable.
Villarreal were two goals up at bottom club Elche inside 20 minutes, but they took their foot off the gas and surrendered the lead before half-time, proving unable to shift up a gear in the second half and eventually drawing, 2-2.
It was even worse for Malaga, who lost 2-1 at home to relegation candidates Almeria. Samu Castillejo scored an equaliser with 15 minutes to go, but Malaga immediately conceded a second to taste defeat. They stay in seventh, four points behind Valencia.
Mid-Table Winners: Eibar, Real Sociedad, Rayo Vallecano
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For the clutch of sides in mid-table, say eighth to 14th, consistency is key to transforming a stuttering season into a more successful one.
In a close league table, a handful of consecutive wins—or even three from four—can shift teams up four or five places, ending fears of a relegation battle and fuelling hopes of a challenge for the European places.
For those teams, early points in 2015 and a positive start to the year were all important.
Real Sociedad managed it with their win over Barcelona, a partly unexpected result, but one that continued Barça's struggles at Anoeta of late. La Real moved to 18 points and 13th place with the win.
Rayo Vallecano ended a pre-winter break streak of three successive losses by beating Getafe away from home, 2-1, to move into 11th.
And just perhaps beginning to dream of what they might be able to achieve, tiny Eibar beat Espanyol, 2-1, to move into eighth place, a crazy position almost at the midway stage, now on 23 points—seven behind the lowest Champions League-chasing side, Malaga.
Losers: The Again out-of-Form Athletic Bilbao
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Athletic Bilbao looked at one point to have emerged from their awful start to the season and put together something like the form that saw them take fourth place last season, but that now looks to have been a bit of a false dawn.
Still in mid-table, in 12th place, Athletic lost 1-0 at Deportivo this weekend to make it three defeats and no wins in four, with only one of those four games coming against opponents higher in the table than Athletic themselves.
It's time to regroup quickly, find the winning formula and move back into the top half. They will have no better chance than their next match: home to 19th-place Elche.
