Next Sunday, 15th of February 2015, La Liga’s current champions Atlético Madrid will travel to Galicia to measure forces with a somewhat rejuvenated Celta de Vigo at Los Balaídos for round 23 of the Spanish Liga BBVA, a match where Los Colchoneros will try to extend their recent excellent moment by snatching the third consecutive win in the league.

Last Saturday was a memorable afternoon for those Atlético’s supporters that were lucky enough to witness, since their team ended up celebrating a hammering win over Real Madrid. The Colchoneros put up an almost vintage performance and humiliated their all-time neighbours and rivals by 4-0, relaunching La Liga’s title battle by reducing Real’s advantage to just four points. Tiago’s goal on the 14th minute literally opened the score to a brilliant overall performance from Diego Simeone’s boys, who, just four minutes, later clinched the second one thanks to a spectacular overhead kick from the canterano Saul Niguez. After the break, when it was expected that Real would try to at least mitigate Atlético’s blatant superiority, Los Colchoneros continued with their triumphant ride and it didn’t come as a surprise when Griezmann (on minute 67’) and Mandzukic (on minute 89’) signed the team’s third and fourth goals.

Atlético’s display of power showed that they are still alive and that they are still entitled to maintain their hopes of winning La Liga’s title for the second time in a row.

After two consecutive impressive wins, Atlético’s upcoming fixture will definitely be far from easy, especially if we have in mind Celta’s spectacular performance at Vicente Calderón last September. For that particular match, Diego “El Cholo” Simeone will not be able to rely on the services of Koke, who got himself injured against Real last Saturday, and of Arda Turan and Mario Mandzukic, who are currently suspended.

As for Celta, the Galician team seems to have already recovered from the long dark period they experienced in very the recent past. After a narrow but deserved home win against Córdoba last weekend, Celta clinched a vital draw at Anoeta against Real Sociedad and have remained undefeated after two consecutive matches, something that hadn’t happened for quite some time.

Against all odds, Eduardo “Toto” Berizzo has apparently managed to recover his team after their unimpressive winning fast and now they seem to be back on track, just in time to entertain the current La Liga’s champions next Sunday.

Despite Celta’s recent improvements, it is not very likely that they can cause Atlético’s a major upset, especially if the Los Colchoneros manage to replicated their last Saturday’s overwhelming performance against Real Madrid.

Celta

Stats: W-2 L-2 D-1

Recent Form - DWLLW

Atlético Madrid

Stats: W-3 L-2 D-0

Recent Form - WWLWL

Possible Line-ups

Celta de Vigo (4-3-3) - Sérgio Álvarez - Jonny - Fontas - Gomez - Cabral - Augusto - Radoja - Krohn Dehli - Orellana - Nolito - Larrivey

Atlético Madrid (4-4-1-1) - Moya - Juanfran - Sequeira - Miranda - Godín - Tiago - Gabi - Griezmann - Niguez - Raul Garcia - Mandzukic

Prediction

Celta de Vigo 1 Atlético Madrid 2