Numancia vs Atletico Madrid Predictions & Betting Tips, Match Previews

This is Atleti’s first game since the bitter disappointment of losing to Real Madrid on penalties in the Champions League final. The good news is that Diego Simeone remains at the helm despite suggesting he might leave following the game and with the Argentine in charge you have to fancy them to have another very strong season.

They will be without a few players here given Euro 2016 finished recently but they’ll still take a strong squad to take on Numancia. The likes of Gabi, Godín and Koke have been fielding questions from the press this week ahead of the new season and they’ll also have one or two new signings to call on here.

Numancia finished 10th in the Segunda Division last season so will provide the sort of moderate test that Atleti will be looking for at this stage in pre-season. Numancia are yet to play any pre-season friendlies either so shouldn’t have any kind of fitness advantage and therefore you’d have to strongly expect Atleti to win this game.

They will be without Antoine Griezmann though and they do at times look a little short of inspiration up front when the Frenchman is missing. The addition of Nicolas Gaitan from Benfica should help in terms of creativity but it may take a little while for everything to click into gear. Atleti’s first pre-season friendly last year was also against Numancia and they strolled to a fairly pedestrian 2-0 win thanks to two Fernando Torres goals.

Numancia shouldn’t cause them any problems here and Atleti have only let in 2 goals in their last 14 pre-season friendlies but it may be a bit soon to see them at their attacking best so a low scoring win is likely and there looks to be real value in backing there to be under 2.5 goals at 13/10.