Atletico Madrid vs Barcelona Betting Tips & Predictions

It is rare that you can class Barcelona as being in poor form but unquestionably they are right now and April is not the best of times to stop playing your best football. They have taken only 1 point from their last 3 league games, losing their last two against Real Madrid and Real Sociedad to just open the door in La Liga’s title race. Their advantage is now just 3 points after their 1-0 defeat at Real Sociedad last weekend but of more pressing issue on Wednesday night is their Champions League future.

They beat Atleti 2-1 in the 1st Leg at Camp Nou last week but there was enough evidence in the 1st Half prior to the sending off of Fernando Torres to suggest that this could be a very tricky evening. Atleti led through Torres’ strike and created a few other openings. However even against 10 men, Barca deserve credit for the intense manner in which they approached the 2nd half with Luis Suarez scoring twice to give the Catalans a slender advantage.

Atletico Madrid are now only 3 points behind Barca in La Liga after they won 3-1 in Barcelona against Espanyol on Saturday. They have been scoring plenty of goals of late having struggled in that department for most of the season but the absence of first-choice centre-back Jose Gimenez is leaving them more vulnerable than usual at the back. Both teams have scored in all of Atleti’s last 4 games and that is good news for Barcelona who will be keen to cancel out the away goal Torres, who will be suspended here, netted last week.

Comparisons will clearly be drawn here to Atletico Madrid’s 1-0 home win over Barcelona at this stage 2 seasons ago, which eliminated the Catalans. However this game is different for many reasons. Perhaps most significantly Barcelona now have Luis Suarez, who is arguably now as important to the side as Leo Messi and certainly his absence was felt at the weekend as they failed to score and slumped to another defeat in San Sebastian.

Barcelona haven’t failed to score in 2 successive matches since they followed up that 1-0 defeat to Atleti with a 1-0 league defeat at Granada 2 years ago. With Atleti’s defence slightly depleted you can certainly see the visitors getting on the scoresheet at some point in the game and Diego Simeone won’t be as confident in his side’s ability to just keep things tight and try and nick the 1-0 win this time around given that and given Barcelona’s front 3 are much stronger now.

He named a bold attacking line-up in the 1st Leg which suggests he feels the best way to beat Barcelona is by attacking them and he might just be right. The Catalans have conceded in all of their last 5 matches and therefore backing both teams to score at 4/5 looks like a solid bet here.