Atlético Madrid 3-0 Deportivo Alavés: Player ratings and Mattress Maker of the Match poll

Jan Oblak (8): It feels like a while since Jan last got a clean sheet in LaLiga, but he got one Saturday and was near-perfect as usual.

Santiago Arias (8.5): Probably Arias’ best performance in terms of overall well-roundedness. The Colombian was responsible for the first goal and was solid defensively throughout the match. He completed over 90 percent of his passes, too, which is astounding for a full back.

Stefan Savic (7): Not all that good, but got away with it. Probably the strongest point of his game was again his defensive headers, but with Giménez back he is no longer required to do that job.

Lucas Hernández (7): Not great either, not nearly as involved defensively or as accurate with his passing. He was taken off on 36 minutes with an apparent knee injury.

Saúl (7.5): Another start at left back, and Saúl certainly gets the benefit of the doubt for playing way out of position. His dribbling was solid and unsurprisingly he was better going forward than defensively. The positional discomfort was revealed by his pass completion rate of just 54 percent, awful by his standards and 40 percent worse than Atlético Madrid’s right back.

Correa (6): Correa’s impact from the start has been much less noteworthy than what he offers from the bench. He was solid enough Saturday, but it was a surprise he was not taken off at some point. He cracked a shot that forced a fabulous save from Fernando Pacheco before Rodri followed up for the third goal.

Thomas Partey (7): Good to see Thomas get more playing time, because he has gotten more and more comfortable in central midfield as this season has progressed. He seems to be a solid partner for Rodri and was at times dominant Saturday, both in the air and in the tackle.

Photo by Denis Doyle/Getty Images

Rodri (9): If you haven’t been able to tell before now, we have a very special player on our hands here, people. It seems like each week we find something new that blows us away about Rodri’s game, be it his precision passing (less so today, “just” 83 percent) or his stellar defensive ability. Rodri can do it all — and he’s started to score goals now too. It is truly unbelievable that Atlético were able to replace Gabi with their first attempt when they struggled for four years to replace Diego Costa.

Thomas Lemar (7.5): The key stat for Lemar is key passes, because that will be his role on this team long-term — he fired off two of those on Saturday. He will be the linchpin for Atleti’s attack once he is capable of fully dominating games, which we have yet to see in LaLiga.

Antoine Griezmann (8.5): A very good day out for the captain, who got his goal after cracking a shot off the post and getting his own rebound a millimeter away from goal. Griezmann combined well with Kalinić, who suits him far more as a partner than Correa.

Nikola Kalinić (7.5): Not very involved outside of his goal, which was largely due to Arias’ work. Kalinić seems like the kind of player who can be anonymous for 80 minutes and then pop up out of nowhere with a goal, which could be very useful in this side.

Subs:

Jose Gimenez (7): Did pretty well in his cameo after returning from injury. He hit the bar from a Lemar corner, but showed a few signs of rust.

Vitolo (6.5): Vitolo is getting his minutes, slowly but surely. Not great against Alavés but showed his quality with a mazy run and pass to send Griezmann off to the races for his goal.

Francisco Montero (6.5): Got 25 minutes of LaLiga football under his belt and didn’t put a foot wrong. Could be huge for him.