Areas Where Atletico Madrid Are Worse Than Last Season
They may have lost at Barcelona on Saturday to slip three points behind the Catalans at the top of La Liga, but Atletico Madrid can be proud of the effort that they put in.
Ultimately, red cards for Filipe Luis and Diego Godin proved costly as Luis Suarez’s winner earned the hosts the three points. But one result doesn’t make a title race, and Diego Simeone’s men will be confident that they can keep pushing the champions until the end.
However, does Simeone's team have areas he should be worried about?
Atletico likely need to be perfect from hereon in if they want to catch Barca, so they could do with righting some of their wrongs.
Goalscoring
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A haul of just 31 goals from 22 league matches—four less than Eibar in eighth—isn’t the type of record that you’d associate with a title challenger, and it has proved to be an issue that has faced Atletico all season.
It is a desperately poor tally when you compare it to 67 strikes from their 38 games last season and 77 when they won the league in 2013/14, with the struggles of Jackson Martinez—who has just three goals all season—and Fernando Torres perhaps going some way toward explaining the problem.
Simeone, too, can take his fair share of the blame here.
On plenty of occasions the Atletico coach could have let his team loose a little bit more, but he’s often happy for them to keep the handbrake on to protect one-goal leads.
Midfield Creativity
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Part of that goalscoring problem comes from a lack of creativity in midfield, where neither Oliver Torres nor Yannick Carrasco has progressed in the manner that many hoped he would.
Indeed, with Carrasco starting as the player closest to Antoine Griezmann at the Camp Nou on Saturday, the midfield of Gabi, Augusto Fernandez, Saul Niguez and Koke was built for hard work more than anything, which they certainly showed during the opening period of the game until Lionel Messi grabbed Barca’s equaliser in the 30th minute.
A little more craft in there would doubtless go a long way, and although Simeone opted to add just Fernandez (who has picked up an injury) and Matias Kranevitter (whose signing was made in the summer) in January, he could probably do with a little bit more invention. It is clear the club is missing Arda Turan, who left for Barca in July.
Overreliance on Antoine Griezmann
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And as part of those scoring and creativity issues, Atletico have come to rely on their one man in form.
Time and time again this season, France international Antoine Griezmann has dug his side out of trouble, scoring 12 of those 31 Liga goals and popping up with vital strikes in both the Champions League and Copa del Rey—taking his season’s tally to 19 in all competitions.
He managed to scored 25 times in the last campaign, but he was backed up by goalscoring contributions from Mario Mandzukic (20) and Raul Garcia (10), but with both of those having left the club in the summer, a void was created that Simeone hasn’t really filled.
The addition of another player who can find the net regularly would add another element to this Atletico team, especially when you look at the free-scoring nature of their closest rivals in La Liga.
Performing in Big Games
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Saturday's defeat at Barcelona means the Catalans have done the league double over Atletico in two successive seasons, and it also means Simeone’s side have a miserable record of just one point from their three meetings with Barca and Real Madrid this season, with the second Madrid derby of the campaign to come in the final weekend of February.
Even if they were to win at Bernabeu, though, they wouldn’t be able to match the double they did over Real last season, meaning the points they’ve dropped in this campaign could prove detrimental to their title challenge.
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