Diego Simeone praised Atletico Madrid for their effort, but conceded that they have trouble in seeing out games as easily as they should.
Los Colchoneros held a 2-0 lead heading into the final few minutes at Granada on Thursday night, before Filipe Luis’ second yellow card and Odion Ighalo’s last-minute goal saw them sweat.
“Normally we are not a team that has a lot of possession, but those are just numbers,” considered Simeone on Granada’s 66 per cent possession recorded.
“I believe in chances created, which is what matters and what counts, we had a lot of situations to make it more than 2-1.
“What really makes me happy is the effort made by the players. It's not easy to win, win, win and keep winning.
“The good thing is that we do not think beyond the next big game we have against Athletic. That makes us live with the intensity that we live for the moment and do not think about anything else.
“I've said it a thousand times, we don’t have the ability to finish games so calmly, we could have finished the game before, we did not and it ended up tight.”
Diego Costa converted Atleti’s first penalty, before handing over the task to David Villa for the second.
“First Costa and then Villa. It was nice to see that David asked him and Diego let him take it. I found that a great gesture from Costa and obviously a great game for Villa.
“Winning away from home is very difficult. We see it in all leagues because it is difficult to do so. Against Espanyol we had the chance in the first half to do better and we did not.
“Today we took the chances. It was nice to see that when things were difficult at the end we were able to fight, you have to see the team struggle and fight, that’s what it will take to stay at the top.”
