A lot of people are WRONGLY counting Atleti out. They're ahead of us, they're battle tested and they're tough....

Last time I checked they don't hand out trophies for being second. Winning the league is all that matters. If we are not going to win it, finishing 2nd or 3rd is absolutely the same to me.

Meh i've totally lost interest about this season when i saw Barca pummeling us in our own backyard.

I could care less where we finish.

agree with the demon of carthage. in this league, for me its winning it. if we get to that arsenal type mentality of "the 2nd place trophy", then there is a huge problem. we know the reality of the situation, a loss in the clasico at home by that scoreline is more like a 7 point gap than 6; when u take into account head 2 head. we know all this but the mentality should just be to keep going till the season's end , play hard in the other competition too, and not talk about "coming 2nd".

Nooooo.... both Barca and Atleti are rivals. Winning La Liga is the target, but finishing ahead of those two is a target as well. It would be a disaster to finish behind both.

Is it really Sports. i don't even remember if we were 2nd or 3rd last year. All I remember is that we got beat by both of them, no trophies and Barca got all 3.


i believe la liga is gone, just hoping Benitez can sort this out enough to compete against big teams, but realistically I can't see us getting by either Barca nor Bayern. (Could be others as well, but no one compares with thise two ... So far). So our best shot is Copa. Yippee!

That's the thing Bill... if you don't beat those two, you end up behind them. The rest of the league isn't competitive with the top 3. So we MUST finish ahead of Atleti (and that's by beating them).

No. The disaster would be to fail to win the league. There's absolutely no difference between finishing second or third. They're both losers and both trophyless.

I'm sorry but winning is all that matters. Not failing to win the league as often as we would've liked is one thing, but to become a club that takes pride in finishing second? That I can't live with.

Win or lose. There's no middle ground. Trophies are all that matter.

there's no way in hell we win the league this year. we may fluke the cl though

sportsczy wrote:Nooooo.... both Barca and Atleti are rivals. Winning La Liga is the target, but finishing ahead of those two is a target as well. It would be a disaster to finish behind both.

I don't think it's a disaster. You went 8 years without making it past the 8ths in the CL and still WC players like CR still wanted to drop everything and join you. Finishing behind Atleti is not going to do anything against your reputation.

We signed Rafa, of course we won't win the league. The point I was trying to make is that we shouldn't be one of those clubs who target second place as if it's some kind of a trophy. Second or third, it's exactly the same from a big club's perspective.

I agree, first or nothing. Finishing 4th could have consequences, but 2nd or 3rd, lo mismo!

But the actual fault of last two seasons, or maybe it is last 7 seasons lies just as much with Flo as it does with coaches.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:

sportsczy wrote:Nooooo....  both Barca and Atleti are rivals.  Winning La Liga is the target, but finishing ahead of those two is a target as well.  It would be a disaster to finish behind both.

I don't think it's a disaster. You went 8 years without making it past the 8ths in the CL and still WC players like CR still wanted to drop everything and join you. Finishing behind Atleti is not going to do anything against your reputation.

Don't really care about reputation... we'll always have that as long as we can pay for players.  It's about bragging rights.

regardless of what happen to barca or us, we should always target 1st place even it's 15 pts difference. it's about fighting spirit and momentum.

especially it's rafa, i dont like the man mentality, if he somehow get the signal of we are ok being 2nd, i afraid he might screw up even more.

So this is going to sound crazy but I really want to finish a distant 3rd. I think a poor season might be what it takes to move forward and to grow. Sometimes you need to pump poison through your veins to rid you body of the cancer. We need to do it now before the cancer progresses and it becomes too late. We need change, not stagnation.

LOL Sports, we have already lost bragging rights!

Last season we finished 2nd ahead of Atleti by a large margin yet they owned us and have bragging rights!

We (here in this forum) can concede 1st and maybe 2nd too, but the team has to continue to play for first.

But I think, Shamirr may be right. Have a really shit season could possibly lead to the changes most of us want, esp. Perez stepping down.

Personally I'd rather we finish 3rd so Benitez gets the sack.