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For as good as Atlético Madrid can be at home in front of Estadio Wanda Metropolitano’s boisterous crowd, they can be just terrible when they go on the road.
On Sunday, Los Rojiblancos went away to the bottom-placed team in LaLiga and still couldn’t win. In fact, they were fortunate not to lose at Espanyol. That says it all about their away form this season.
Atlético have just three away victories In LaLiga this season — at Leganés, Real Mallorca and Real Betis. Just three wins from 13 away games. There are only seven teams in the league who have won fewer games than that this season, which is quite damning. At the current rate, Atlético are on course to collect just 23 away points by the end of the season, and never before have they had an away points tally that low under Diego Simeone.
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It hasn’t been good whenever Los Colchoneros have had to pack a suitcase, even looking beyond LaLiga. Besides the Champions League win over Lokomotiv Moscow in Russia, and the Supercopa de España semi-final win over Barcelona in Saudi Arabia, Atlético haven’t won any more away games. It has been grim.
It’s difficult to know what is behind this. Simeone has been able to achieve good away results in previous seasons, so why has it been so tough this year?
Well, this season as a whole has been tough for the obvious reasons that come with a turnaround in half of a team’s starters. Atleti’s home form — 28 points from 13 matches, and on course to earn 41 home points — is also the worst of the Simeone era, but not to such an extent as with the away form.
It’s probably the case that the team’s home form is better than it should be and that the away form is worse than it should be. That makes sense when you have fans like those who attend the Wanda Metropolitano every second weekend to push the team onwards. But whatever the case Simeone and his players have to figure it out — and soon. This poor away form is a huge problem, especially with a trip to Liverpool’s Anfield coming up.