Can Diego Simeone Find the Solutions to Atletico Madrid's Alarming Drop in Form?

Diego Simeone has led Atletico Madrid into so many wonderful football arenas during his five years as the club’s manager, but right now Leganes’ tiny Estadio Municipal de Butarque is looking like one of the more significant.

The stadium on the outskirts of Madrid, just a stone’s throw from Atletico’s own Vicente Calderon, is home to a team playing in the top tier of Spanish football for the first time.

They were in poor form until Monday night, when four successive defeats suddenly became an afterthought as they beat Osasuna 2-0 at home to pull away from the relegation zone, and the win was the first time since their opening home match of the season that they were able to take anything from a match in front of their own fans.

Their last home point was in late August, when Simeone’s Atletico turned up chastened from a disappointing draw at home to another newly promoted side, Alaves, in their opening match of the campaign.

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Seeking a big result to kick-start his side’s season, Simeone strung Koke, Augusto Fernandez, Gabi and Saul Niguez across the midfield, a move that stifled the opposition and therefore the game. The manager was no doubt seeking to control the match and then win it in a manner that his team has done countless times before, but it just never looked like happening on the evening.

Leganes, obviously, were delighted to have picked up a point against one of their aristocratic neighbours on their first home occasion in La Liga, but the match said an awful lot more about Atletico and Simeone than it did about them.

That the manager responded to the need for a win by sending out his team to be as compact as they were wasn’t all too flattering, especially at the start of a season that seemed to promise that Atletico would at least try to be more attacking. To make the result worse by comparison, Barcelona won 5-1 at Leganes three weeks later, while Real Madrid saw them off 3-0 more recently.

And indeed, the match served as a wake-up call for the Atletico Madrid manager. He altered his approach in the weeks that followed, and we started to see a better, more expansive Atletico.

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There were eight wins from nine matches, as some wonderful, thrilling football was played—most notably at home, as Atleti put five goals past Sporting Gijon, seven past Granada and four past Malaga.

This was a new, different, attacking Atletico, and a team that Simeone was sending out on to the pitch with winning a game in mind, not just controlling it.

That he had changed tact so significantly so early in the season—most notably in midfield, where players were now being encouraged to get into the penalty area and the free-scoring Yannick Ferreira Carrasco was the key beneficiary—was a sign that things were never right in the first place. He knew that he needed to change things, and he acted accordingly.

Yet now, after the miserable 3-0 defeat at home to Real Madrid on Saturday night—following on from the losses at Sevilla and Real Sociedad, which mean that Atletico have now lost three of their last four Liga matches—Simeone finds himself in Leganes again, at least mentally.

He knows that he has to change something for fear of falling further behind. Indeed, it might already be too late for a significant title challenge, but he’s got to at least get the quest for a top-four spot back on the road, and the challenges in the Champions League and Copa del Rey.

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There is still much to play for in Atletico’s Madrid’s season, but the way they are playing right now suggests that they’ll be getting nowhere near the standards that their manager has set for them.

So what does he do? And perhaps most pertinently, does he have the desire to change things once again?

The manager’s flat reaction to the Real defeat perhaps speaks volumes, and it is bound to make him wonder whether the change in emphasis towards being a more attacking team is worth it, seeing as he shortened his contract earlier in the season and looks likely to be exiting the club either at the end of this season or the end of the next one.

And so is it as simple as packing the midfield again? Perhaps fielding the fit-again Tiago in the centre of midfield alongside Gabi as two protective screens in front of the back four?

In the short-term, it might be.

Indeed, the Champions League might be the best place to try this out given that Atletico have qualified for the knockout stages already thanks to four one-goal victories in their four group-stage matches so far. A home game with PSV Eindhoven and then a trip to Bayern Munich are to come, and maybe Simeone will try out something different there.

What he has been trying to achieve is difficult, though, that shouldn’t be underestimated, and it seems as though he has some sympathy in that regard.

Writing in Marca, Luis Aznar (adapted by Aldo Sainati) summed it up quite well when saying:

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Incorporating new attacking players and changing the club identity is easier said than done, and the cracks starting to show in their defence have some beginning to worry if the team is heading in the right direction to begin with.

The tone in the dressing room is self-critical, which is necessary if Cholo's men are going to turn it around.

"

That self-criticism is bound to be coming from the manager, too, and there is sure to be a huge level of introspection going on at the club’s Ciudad Deportiva training ground right now, and indeed after each one of the recent defeats.

The real question will centre over whether or not Simeone can rediscover his mojo as well as that of his players, and if he decides that in order to do that he needs to revert to the old Atletico way of pragmatism over prioritising getting men forward.

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An interesting few weeks lie ahead of the Argentinian, especially with question marks over his future perhaps emerging and getting bigger and bigger.

Atletico’s Liga fixture list is fairly kind, with matches against Osasuna and Espanyol coming up in the next two and offering up the opportunity for six points; however, it is dependent on how Simeone’s men go about the matches.

Fail to win both, and things could be reaching a crisis point going into a tough fixture at Villarreal.

Simeone won’t be thinking about that one just yet, but he might still be thinking about Leganes.

That result forced him to change his approach.

Will the Real Madrid loss do the same?