Atletico: Atletico are battling against a host of injuris. Captain Diego Godin is out despite scoring the winner against Bilbao last time out. Stevan Savic, Lucas Hernandez and Juanfran are also doubts. Diego Costa is set to return.
Barcelona: Ivan Rakitic is serving a suspension, but Philippe Coutinho could come back into the side to soften that blow.
Simeone: We always struggle when facing Barcelona. I consider they have always been the best team in the world, regardless of the fact they haven't been as good in Europe as in LaLiga these last years, but their statistics in Spain are crazy. We had hard times against them, we did better in the Champions League in qualifying rounds, in LaLiga we always struggle. Tomorrow we have another chance, we play against a great rival who are living a great moment, we have the energy and we are enthusiasts, the word 'chance' is beautiful when speaking of football. We work in order to minimise the chances of having injured players, every team does and all of them have injured players. But we are great, we only have three injured players, Juanfran had a pain yesterday in the calf muscle, so we only have three players that can't play tomorrow.
Valverde: [It] is a very important game after losing our last match [against Real Betis]. We lost three points and now we've got a game where we're trying to keep our lead. It's a very tight league, there's not much difference between the teams. The so-called bigger teams are dropping points but we know Barca is a team that when we get on a roll are very hard to stop. There's no reason why we can't challenge for every trophy this season. Antoine [Griezmann] is a great player and in big games he tends to appear. He's a player we need to consider [on Saturday]. I imagine we'll see the best of him, although we hope not. Atleti are getting the best out of him and we will need to stop him.
Did you know?
Atletico have gone eight years without a league win over Barcelona.
Score prediction: 2-2
Atletico possible lineup: Oblak, Luis, Savic, Saul, Lucas, Koke, Thomas, Rodri, Lemar, Costa, Griezmann
Barcelona possible lineup: Ter Stegen, Semedo, Pique, Lenglet, Alba, Busquets, Arthur, Vidal, Arthur, Messi, Suarez