Atlético, before the goal crisis

Atlético left all the goals in the league debut against Granada. A brilliant premiere, with a 6-1 to excite the fans and leave samples that João Félix is ​​prepared to lead the mattress attack and that Luis Suárez continues to have a fine-tuned sense of goal. That win at the Wanda Metropolitano marked the twentieth consecutive game at the door.

However, in the next two days the team has dried up. In Huesca the scoring streak ended of at least one goal per game that had been maintained since the February 1 derby at the Santiago Bernabéu (1-0). The good level shown by João Félix, together with occasions as clear as Suárez himself in a heads-up with Andrés Fernández, were insufficient to start more than one point against the team led by Míchel. Against Villarreal there was no direct option to score, since it was not finished on goal in the whole game. Two consecutive games ended 0-0 and that already weigh down a team that last season suffered its scoring shortage mainly before the break.

In Balaídos, Atlético faces a historic streak. Since Simeone's arrival, the three consecutive league games have never been reached without scoring. Yes it happened three times counting all the competitions: in 2014, when he linked two defeats in the Cup semifinals against Madrid (3-0 and 0-2) with the game lost in the League in between against Almería (2-0) that ended with Gabi under the sticks; in 2016, with the draw against Espanyol (0-0) together with the defeats in Munich in the Champions League (1-0) and in Villarreal (3-0) and last season, when the defeats in Turin against Juventus (1-0) and in the League against Barcelona (0-1) came together with the draw at Villarreal (0-0). The three streaks would end the next game with the victories against Valladolid (3-0), Las Palmas (1-0) and Lokomotiv (2-0) respectively.

Now, and after more than 180 minutes without marking, Cholo needs to recover the most effective version of the team against a Celta that has added four of the last six points in their stadium against Atlético. Luis Suárez returned yesterday after a long trip and completing Uruguay's matches against Chile and Ecuador and João Félix and Carrasco will only have today to prepare for the game. The Portuguese started against France and Sweden and had minutes against Spain and the Belgian played 173 minutes against England and Iceland. Despite this, Atlético manages many variants above (Correa, Llorente, Lemar, Vitolo and Costa have been in Madrid getting ready) and excuses are not worth adding another door to zero. If the rojiblanco team wants to compete for high levels it needs to generate chances and score goals so as not to start to get off the head.