Next Sunday, 1st of March 2015, Atlético Madrid, who have been fairly inconsistent lately, will travel to Andaluzia to measure forces with the current Europa League holders, Sevilla, at Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan for round 25 of the Spanish Liga BBVA.

Last Wednesday’s night UEFA Champions League match against Bayer Leverkusen was something that Atlético will certainly not want to remember in the future. Los Colchoneros were miles away from what they can really do and ended up by losing the match 1-0. If that wasn’t bad enough, Atlético have also lost the Portuguese experienced midfielder Tiago for the second leg match, since he was sent-off on the 76’ minute.

Atlético’s performance was quite similar to the one they had presented at Los Balaídos two weeks ago, when they suffered their fifth defeat of the season. For reasons unknown, the team seems to have caved in under the weight of the responsibility of having hammered their neighbours and rivals of Real Madrid by 4-0 early this month, because ever since that match, they have never produced a dominant performance as the one they presented against their arch-enemies.

The upcoming clash against Sevilla will definitely be a very complicated one for the current Spanish champions and they will certainly need to pull something very special in order to leave Sanchez Pizjuan with the three points. For that particular match, Diego “El Cholo” Simeone will not be able to rely on the services of Siqueira, who is currently suspended, and on Saul Niguez and Koke, who are still recovering from their respective injuries.

As for Sevilla, the Andaluzian team snatched a fantastic win against Borussia Moenchengladbach last Thursday, thus managing to proceed to the next round of the UEFA Europa League. Such win was of particular importance for Sevilla, especially after their last weekend’s upset at Anoeta against Real Sociedad. The Sevillistas' performances have been fairly inconsistent recently and no one ever knows what to really expect from them. Sevilla lost three of their last five La Liga matches and were overcome by Valencia at the table. A defeat against Atlético could kick them out of La Liga’s top five if Villarreal manage to defeat Real Madrid at Bernabeu.

It is hard to name any favourites for the upcoming clash, although, as the Spanish current champions, Atlético Madrid enjoy from a slight favouritism for the Sanchez Pizjuan match.

Sevilla

Stats: W-3 L-2 D-0

Recent Form - WLWWL

Atlético Madrid

Stats: W-3 L-2 D-0

Recent Form - LWLWW

Possible Line-ups

Sevilla (4-2-3-1) - Rico - Kolodziejczak - Navarro - Carriço - Figueiras - Krychowiak - Mbia - Vitolo - Vidal - Banega - Bacca

Atlético Madrid (4-4-1-1) - Moya - Juanfran - Gamez - Miranda - Godín - Mario Suarez - Gabi - Griezmann - Turan - Raul Garcia - Mandzukic

Prediction

Sevilla 1 Atlético Madrid 2