Are Atleti the "Best of the Rest" in La Liga?

I think they are the best out of the rest atm, you can just see it with their performances how much they have improved since Flores' days

In fact if they get a greater squad i can actually see them sniffing around the top two, believe me or not they were boosting some pretty impressive stats last season under Simeone. I just hope that participating in the EL will not have a drastic effect on their league form

Well we've been in 3rd place for 3 straiaght seasons. Unless Pochetino does something drastic or we have injury epidemics I don't think it will change. Although I will say that this will probobly be the edgiest confrontation with another La Liga team fighting for 3rd. And I hope it will be the last for a while.

TBH, they might not be consistent consistent, but they aren't alone in that regard in the sense that most of the teams in the league are very inconsistent such as Malaga for example and they happened to have finished 4th last season and only stopped challenging for 3rd spot with 2/3 games remaining

They might not be as consistent as Barca/Real at the moment but they are definitily consistent enough to claim 3rd spot especially now that they have Simeone who has instilled this determination and urge into Atleti fine tuning their defence and making their attack click despite most of them being fairly new to the team....

What i like about atleti is that when they lose a player they replace the said player with another one, for example they sold Salvio to Benfica and replaced him with Christian Rodriguez(of what i have seen of him, this guy was a steal being free, might well be one of the best LW in the league), he might not play on the same wing but moving Arda to the RW(where Salvio used to play) has offered competition to Adrian who already used to start there last season, also another one, Diego sadly had to be returned to Bremen(even though he was great for Atleti) but even he was replaced with Emre who yet has to start a game although Koke is doing a mighty fine job as their starting AM

The other guy who was sold was Dominguez, he could've been a guy for the future but Miranda-Godin partnership is sure to stay together for another 3 years at least, that would offer atleti enough time to look for another promising defender, probably from Castilla hmmm

Not to mention Olivier Torres has been promoted

All in all i think Atleti were quick in replacing the lost ones, not that they needed a squad overhaul like Valencia or Malaga, i fail to see why they wouldn't finish third this season

One reason why they did so bad last season was because Manzano was not exactly cut for the job and they still had some rebels playing for them, Simeone comes in and the first thing he did was to get rid of Reyes who was a pain in the arse for both Flores and Manzano, Atleti had one of the best if not the best second halves of the season and to no suprise thats when Falcao turned corner and started performing like a €40 mill man

Atleti's team would challenge for big honours as it is, no point in repairing something thats not broken..... One of Atleti's main task ahead keeping Simeone/Falcao/Courtois plus of course making the CL, they do that and this season would be a success for them