Atlético's five away wins: a misleading statistic?

Atleti already have five wins on the road, having managed six in the whole of last season's LaLiga campaign. Nacho Donado believes the figure is misleading because the team gave up on the league in January; Alberto Carballo counters that the problem started earlier.

Alberto Carballo brings a stat from the broadcast: Atlético already have five away wins, compared with six across the whole of last season's LaLiga campaign. Nacho Donado is quick to respond: there's a catch. He spent the entire second half of last season saying Atleti had given up on the league in January, so the matches from January to May distort the numbers. In his view, the figure has been widely used to beat the team with, but Atleti weren't competing in those games because they had nothing to play for.

Carballo isn't convinced. He points out that Atleti didn't win their first six away games either: their away form was already a long way off the mark as early as August. And he returns to his core argument: historically, Atleti have fallen out of contention in competitions in games like these, on Saturday afternoons, something he says everyone has etched into their memory. That is why they used to call them "the Levante of Munich" – capable of shining in Munich and slipping up against Levante.

Nacho sums up his position in one line: the sad thing isn't the statistic, but how you get there. Carballo signs off by noting that today, unlike the day of the Deportivo game, the win comes with a good feeling.