Starting the season with less consistency made Real Madrid lag behind Barcelona's points, but they began to rediscover their best form when the team's balance began to be rebuilt so that currently Real Madrid has managed to occupy first place in the standings. Barcelona started the season quite consistently and even won quite promisingly, but after experiencing several bad results, Barcelona fell further behind Real Madrid. That is why the consistency of the club can sometimes change so quickly because several important players are injured, which affects the team's performance in collecting points in each match and that happened to Barcelona.
I agree with you that consistency is key for a club in facing the title competition. Real Madrid has shown an impressive revival after a bad start to the season, slowly they can show their best performance, in contrast to Barcelona who seem to have difficulty maintaining the level of play due to injuries to several key players even though the squad owned by Barcelona is not as great as that of Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid because Barcelona cannot recruit good players due to financial problems.
Barcelona team management is more responsible than their finances for recruiting good players. I think they have enough good players and they deserve to win against any strong team in the world. They have a lot of potential players who are signed and they are in great form. They were at the top of La Liga a few weeks ago and their present players are doing their professional duties with great skill. If you compare them to Real Madrid, they have the most valuable players in the world but they can't giving their full perform lack of coordination. Madrid have made an impressive comeback in the last few matches it is a good feeling for them and for the fans.
This is the excitement of La Liga, there is always a cross between each other at the top of the standings, not too dominant. At the beginning of the season, Barcelona performed impressively and Real Madrid did the opposite even though their squad was filled with star players and even expensive ones, but that did not guarantee their compactness. Barcelona, flanked by young academy players, also gave quite a big surprise at the beginning of the match, even though they were finally overtaken by Real Madrid. But now it seems that both teams have found their best performance and this will certainly make the La Liga competition even fiercer.
Barcelona's previous problem was that they had difficulty playing with opponents who applied a defensive strategy, Flick had not found a powerful formula. This is different from the Guardiola era, Barcelona even though they applied the tiki taka slaughter mode. but they managed to dismantle the opponent's defense.
But after seeing Barcelona's current development, it's crazy to be able to slaughter in 4 matches outside of one draw, starting from Real Madrid being slaughtered 2-5, after that Real Betis 5-1 then had a draw then won a comeback again over Benfica 5-4 and finally won a landslide victory over Valencia 7-1, so a total of 23 goals in the last 5 matches they made. This indicates that Flick has found his best performance to overcome opponents who play a defensive strategy. Let's see which team will be consistent until the end of the season, without underestimating Atletico Madrid because they could make a surprise for Real Madrid and Barcelona.