Atletico Madrid has the potential to maintain its position as last season to target third position. Because 1 and 2 are still ideal positions for Real Madrid and Barcelona. If you look at Atletico Madrid's ambitions last season, they didn't just stumble, but they were too confident and didn't realize that players who couldn't control their emotions only had a bad impact on the team's performance.
Why always real and barcelona? Any team that capable enough to be consistent during the season will become a winner. It's not always real madrid and barcelona. The club like atletico, villareal were also having competence to be a winner in la liga as well.
I think that you're over confident if la liga will always be winning by barcelona or real madrid. La liga was not about these two teams.
Obviously, La Liga is not about Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. There are 20 teams participating in La Liga, but why only Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid always dominate?
Teams like Sevilla, Villarreal and Real Sociedad can only provide competition but they cannot break domination.
You can see the list of La Liga Champions in the last 10 years, the three teams above always take turns being Champions. Then where are the other teams, aren't they competing in the same league?