What’s wrong with Atletico Madrid?

After a summer that saw Atletico Madrid splash the cash to the tune of €185 on new signings, the biggest spend of any Champions League club, hopes were high that Diego Simeone now had the tools at his disposal to be competitive on all fronts this season.

However, with the campaign now two and half months old, Atleti already find themselves 10 points off the pace in LaLiga and having lost two of their opening three Champions League fixtures.

After Sunday’s 1-0 defeat against Real Betis, on a Clasico weekend when they knew they’d have the opportunity to make up ground on at least one of Real Madrid and Barcelona, Atleti have now won just two out of eight in all competitions.

Those victories were a fortuitous 1-0 triumph in Vigo and a comeback home win against newly promoted Leganes. Results have not been good and just as troublingly for anyone connected with Atleti, the underlying numbers do not make for any better reading.

The worrying numbers behind worrying results

Atleti’s start to the season was actually not a bad one. They won four of their opening six and looked to be growing in confidence with three straight victories by mid September as recent foes Athletic were defeated in Bilbao and RB Leipzig ultimately brushed aside in the Champions League, largely thanks to a classy display from Antoine Griezmann.

However, their performance levels and results have significantly dropped off since then, with worrying aspects to just about every one of their eight displays since the Leipzig game.

They’ve kept just one clean sheet since then, with Robin Le Normand a big miss in central defence in recent weeks, following a nasty head collision in the Madrid derby. While Atleti retain the best defensive record in LaLiga, seven goals conceded in Champions League outings against Benfica and Lille, suggest Le Normand’s return cannot come soon enough.

In truth though, you can look at just about every part of this Atleti team right now and see problems. The balance isn’t quite right in midfield or attack, with regular structural and personnel changes failing to fix the issue.

In only two of their last eight games have Atleti had more attempts than their opponents. At times, the difference has been stark. The shot count was 19-4 in Benfica’s favour as the Portuguese side cruised to a 4-0 win in the Champions League. It was 16-4 just four days later in Donostia, as Real Sociedad failed to make their superiority count in a 1-1 draw.

Meanwhile, Sunday’s clash with Real Betis saw the Seville side, who were missing their two most dangerous attacking players with Isco and Giovani Lo Celso sidelined, muster 24 attempts on goal to Atleti’s 10.

According to FBref.comthey’ve created more xG than their opponents in only three of their last eight matches, coming out second best in that metric against Rayo Vallecano, Celta Vigo, Real Sociedad and Betis in LaLiga.

Too many changes?

With four major signings on board, following the additions of Le Normand, as well as Julian Alvarez, Alexander Sorloth and Conor Gallagher, Atletico Madrid appeared to have the squad depth to attack both LaLiga and an expanded Champions League.

The packed early schedule, particularly in Spain with two midweek LaLiga matchdays also squeezed into the opening two months of the season, unquestionably presented a dilemma for coaches of the continent’s biggest clubs.

It didn’t take long for us to get an idea of how Diego Simeone was going to approach things. 45 minutes to be precise, with Sorloth unceremoniously hauled off at the break on his return to Estadio de la Ceramica, only moments after heading in a debut goal.

While Simeone explained the change as a tactical tweak to bring a different type of forward into the game, it largely set the tone for a season with the Argentine clearly hungry to keep all of his players on their toes and have nobody feeling secure as to their place in the starting eleven.

That can certainly be seen as a positive thing. The logic was understandable given an unrelenting schedule that left Atletico Madrid with 15 games in all competitions before the end of October, compared with 13 in the same period last season.

It was perhaps an attempt to turn rotation, which was always going to be necessary to some degree, into something more resembling natural competition, with changes based on individual performances and the different necessities of each fixture.

The result though, has often left Atleti feeling like a disjointed side with no real sense of a strongest eleven emerging and new signings taking longer to settle than might have been the case had they been afforded more continuity.

Only two outfield players have started more than seven of their 11 league fixtures so far. The regular formation changes have been just as striking with six different systems used already according to FBref.

The contrast to Hansi Flick’s table-topping Barcelona, who have faced the same number of matches, could not be greater. While Simeone has opted for changes virtually every match, Flick has quickly settled on a system and has six players who have started at least 10 of the Catalan club’s 11 LaLiga games so far.

That of course does raise potential questions when it comes to the risk of burnout later in the season, but Atleti will struggle to play the long game with so much ground already to make up.

Simeone takes the blame

As by far the longest-serving coach in the Spanish top flight and somebody who has totally transformed Atletico Madrid’s fortunes as a football club, Diego Simeone is in the rare position of not needing to worry about his immediate future, even when results and performances take a serious turn for the worse, as has been the case in recent weeks.

While the patience of any club’s hierarchy and fanbase will ultimately have its limits, Atletico fans can take solace in the knowledge that there have been periods like this in the past, most notably in the seasons prior to the club’s last title success in 2020/21.

Behind the closed doors of the dressing room, he may have sterner words for his players, but publicly at least, Simeone is currently happy to carry the can and take the blame for his side’s current struggles.

“It’s clear that the start of the game wasn’t good” he said following the defeat to Betis. “The first play came, they scored, they got going and we couldn’t play the game we wanted. It’s clear that the coach’s preparation for the game wasn’t good.”

“The coach has not been able to give the players what they needed for this match” he went on to say. “We prepared it in a certain way but we were not able to do it. The coach has an idea, the players represent it, but it is the coach’s fault.”